Back in Black
by Bella'sExecutioner
Summary: Life. Death. Monsters. Lovers. It's all about perspective. Rule #12: Never Trust Your Eyes. Sequel to Highway to Hell. Rated M for graphic content. - This fic is on hold until my brain decides it wants to write it. Sorry.
1. Chapter 1: July 12th, 2010

**Back in Black- the continuing story of Highway to Hell (A Twilight/Supernatural Crossover)**

**A/N: Welcome back! Just a heads up that if you have not read my fic _Highway to Hell_ this story might be a tad confusing. I recommend starting with that story before jumping into this one. Also it is important to note that you don't have to watch the show Supernatural to follow the plot of this series. You don't really have to know Twilight either. LOL**

**Huge thanks to detroitangel for her awesome beta skills! And to Kharizzmatik and Secamimom for being the most supportive prereaders anyone could ask for. Love and hugs all around.**

**Twilight and Supernatural are not my property. I'm just playing around. **

**Fair warning that this fic is rated M for many reasons. Please read responsibly. **

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**Previously on _Highway to Hell_:**

_**Edward and Jasper Cullen have been groomed by their adopted father, Carlisle, to be the world's best hunters. The game they hunt is something far more sinister than the usual beasts, however. Demons, werewolves and ghosts are the average cases that the Cullen family solve for a living. While on a journey to find out what has happened to their missing father, the boys uncovered the secrets that Carlisle had tried to protect them from. These secrets come a high price- their humanity. **_

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"_I keep looking at the sky  
>'Cause it's gettin' me high<br>Forget the hearse 'cause I'll never die  
>I got nine lives<br>Cat's eyes  
>Usin' every one of them and running wild"<em>

**(_Back in Black, _AC/DC)**

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**Case File #25: Regina Morning**

"_What do you want me to say?" Regina shifted in her chair, her fingers nervously drumming on the table._

"_Just tell us the facts, ma'am," the man in the grey suit informed her._

_She cleared her throat with great difficulty, reaching for the glass of water supplied by the man's partner - a woman dressed in a navy blue, skirt suit._

"_I met the Cullens…fifteen years ago," Regina said, sipping from the glass._

"_Your house was… haunted, was it not?" the man in the grey suit pressed. Regina nodded._

"_Yeah, my ex-husband…mean bastard in life, horror movie psychopath in death," she muttered last. She fingered the silver cross that hung from a chain around her neck. "I remember Dr. Cullen telling me to run that first night. I didn't even realize Hank was in the house…all the sudden this big black car pulls into my driveway and a man's kicking in my backdoor."_

"_How did Dr. Cullen know about the ghost?" the woman inquired. _

_Regina shrugged. "I honestly don't know. I was making dinner at the time and my hand was…" Her voice faltered as she glanced at the waxy burns on the back of right hand. "There was a pot of water boiling on the stove. I was going to make spaghetti for my son's birthday. Hank's spirit pulled…my hand was shoved into the water with a force that I couldn't explain. I couldn't fight it either…it was so strong. If Dr. Cullen hadn't shown up when he did…" she left the rest unsaid. She owed her life, and that of her son, to the Dr. Cullen and his intervention that night. _

"_How did Dr. Cullen exorcise your husband?" the man asked as he took notes on a laptop. Regina wondered why insurance reps would care so much about these details. _

"_How…how do you know so much about this?" she asked, growing wary that these strangers knew so many secret details about that night. "I never told anyone about this," she added with a suspicious glance to the man's partner._

_The woman gave her a charming smile. _

"_I think we've heard all we need to," the man informed her. _

_As mysteriously as they arrived, the two strangers vanished leaving Regina feeling unsettled in their wake. She scoffed at her own irrational fear_.

_A fear that was confirmed when her body was found drained of blood the next morning._

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**(July 12th, 2010)**

**Lesson #11**: Keep your soul in your back pocket

**Jazz PoV**

"_It's gonna be okay, Eddie," I said, throwing his arm over my shoulder and running for all it was worth to the exit._

"_Get out, Jazz," he moaned, "save yourself."_

"_Don't talk like that," I barked, feeling exhaustion weighing down my muscles. "I'm gonna get you out of here."_

"_No, Jazz." _

"_Come on!" I tried to encourage him. I could see the wall of windows—the faint glow of headlights heading towards us._

We're safe_, I thought with relief. The Impala would smash through the glass and then we'd be home-free._

"_We're gonna make it, Eddie," I promised, pushing us harder toward the exit. _

"_Jazz!" he shouted. _

_All at once the car kicked into reverse. The light was fading, retreating, as the windows and the space surrounding us grew dark._

"_No!" I screamed, trying to move faster to catch up._

"_Dad! No! Wait!" I yelled._

"_Jasper!" _

"_No!" _

_Those things were catching up to us and Dad was turning tail to run as far away as possible. _

"_Damn it!" I shouted, feeling like the room was expanding the harder I tried to reach the end._

"_Jasper!"_

"_Jasper!"_

"Jasper!"

I was somewhere between awake and asleep, comfy and cozy despite the nightmare that I was having. I groaned but didn't respond to my name being called, snuggling further into the warmth of the bed beneath me.

"Jasper," the warmth whispered.

I grunted in response.

"He's gonna keep calling for you until we go downstairs."

I pouted. _Why is the bed being so mean? _I thought, cuddling against the soft pillow.

"You keep rubbing against those and we're gonna miss breakfast altogether," the warmth said, giggling.

The sound of that giggle brought me awake instantly.

"The hell…" I whispered blinking my eyes as a pair of nice tits came into view.

"I thought you said it was Heaven being in my arms, not Hell," the owner of the tits teased. It was another couple of seconds before I could remove my eyes from her chest. It seemed like it had been an eternity since I saw a woman naked.

_Well, since I saw a woman that I _wanted_ to see naked,_ I thought. I'd seen Rhea naked more than I cared to remember.

"Uh," I stalled, following the delicate curve of soft, pale flesh up her neck and to a pair of familiar black eyes.

"Alice?" I breathed. A thousand different emotions assaulted me as I looked at her—the strongest being guilt. I hadn't done a damn thing to save her back in Mexico. I just grabbed Edward and ran.

"How did you get out? Where are we? What are…?" I was suddenly very aware of the fact that I was naked, lying on top of my old Sunday school teacher.

I felt my face flush.

Alice giggled, running a finger down my cheek. "I don't think I've ever seen you blush before, Mr. Whitlock. It's quite adorable."

The twinkle in her eye combined with the gentleness of her touch made me blush harder. I felt like some virgin under the bleachers for the first time or something-robbed of my usual confidence.

"Well…I do believe I've never been this lost for words before, ma'am," I admitted sheepishly. And I hadn't. I'd woken up just like this in too many beds to recall—nestled against more breasts than I could count. Never had I felt like a kid with his hand caught in the cookie jar.

"So, after all these years I finally figured out how to shut you up?" she laughed, shoving my shoulder playfully before kissing my cheek.

I smirked, feeling so damn confused that I was still speechless.

"I'm gonna hop in the shower before I head down. Make sure Jensen washes his hands before he eats. Lord knows what kind of mud that boy was probably playing with all weekend at his uncle's house."

Alice rambled on as she slid out from under me and made her way to the adjoining bathroom. I just stared dumbly at her as she left.

_God Almighty__**,**__ she has a sweet little ass. _I was so distracted by the sight that it took another tick for her words to sink in. "Whitlock?" I repeated, realizing that she hadn't called me Mr. Cullen.

_That's weird,_ I thought, but dismissed it. _Alice was the only person who knew my real name. Maybe we had role played last night. That thought had me grinning like a damn fool_.

"Damn, I wish I could remember it," I cursed. I got dressed, throwing on casual clothes and hollering to Edward to shut the fuck up when he called my name again.

"Oh!" a voice cried when I reached the hallway outside the bedroom door. "Daddy said a bad word!"

"Daddy?" I echoed. I didn't have time to figure out what the hell a kid was doing in this place before I was bombarded by a tiny, fast-moving body.

"Ah, demon gnome!" I shouted, without thinking. I'm not exactly sure why I thought a gnome would be chasing me down or even why it would be a demonic gnome at that but that's what came out of my mouth as the two foot tall creature smashed into the side of my leg.

"Demon what?" Edward said, walking up the stairs laughing at me.

"I'm not sure, but can you help me get this creature off of me?" I begged.

He snorted. "Jazz the kids had only spent the weekend with me. That's hardly enough time for you to disown them."

I froze as his words registered. "Kids? Mine?" I repeated slowly. My gaze crept down to my leg where a boy with blonde hair and my smile was looking up at me.

"No way."

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My eyes bounced around like a couple of ping-pong balls at the mercy of Forrest Gump.

_Invasion of the body snatchers? _I thought. _Maybe, whatever Rhea did to me fucked up my brain._

"Dad, please pass the syrup," a little girl with black hair and big blue eyes asked me. Stupidly, I did what she asked, without pointing out that I'm nobody's father.

Scenarios and spells were swirling around my head like a broken rampant tilt-a-whirl at the state fair. None of them made any sense. And with each second that I sat here awake, everything around me felt more and more like a damn dream—a weird, Twilight Zone kind of dream.

"Who else wants pancakes?" Edward asked from his position at the stove. When the hell my I'll-just-have-a-salad-because-there's-no-cooking-involved-with-those brother became a chef mystified me.

"I'll take a few more," I offered. I felt stupid. No, I just felt confused—too damn puzzled to really figure out what the hell was going on.

Alice sat next to me, feeding a baby in a highchair to her right. The blonde boy who had knocked me down upstairs, sat across the table from me, munching on bacon. A little cherub-of-a-girl sat to my left. Just the presence of kids at the kitchen table baffled me. What was worse? Each of them seemed to be under some illusion that I was their Dad.

_What the actual fuck?_

The doorbell rang. "I'll get it," Edward shouted before any of us at the table could offer. Not that I would have offered, but he seemed like he was in a hurry to get the door first.

"Now, Jasper, please be nice," Alice whispered to me. She wiped applesauce from the baby's chin and shot me a look.

I gave her a look right back. "O-kay," I said, having no idea what she was talking about.

"Everyone, you remember my girlfriend," Edward announced, walking back into the kitchen with a redhead attached to his hip.

"Who the hell are you?" I blurted out without thinking. Alice kicked me under the table.

"Hello, again Victoria," she welcomed the woman with a warm smile, trying to shrug away my rudeness.

"Alice, _Asshole_," the redheaded bitch greeted the two of us.

I waited for Alice to snap back at the chick's rude greeting. I scoffed at her she didn't say anything and found her immersed in feeding the baby again.

"How come she can say that and you don't kick her?" I hissed under my breath as Victoria helped Edward finish cooking breakfast.

"She's a guest," Alice argued.

I huffed. "Still doesn't mean I know who she is."

"She's your best friend's steady girlfriend."

"So what's she doing hanging all over my brother?" I snapped.

Alice quirked her brow and laughed. "Brother? I know the kids call him 'Uncle' but I've never heard you call him 'Brother'. Have you been confusing my hormone pills with vitamins again?"

I did a double take at the word 'again' but ignored her teasing. "What do you mean I've never called my brother 'Brother'?" I asked. It just didn't seem possible that I could be even more confused with each passing minute, but here I was at the corner of What the Fuck and Who the Hell again.

"I mean, Edward Masen has two perfectly healthy and living parents who are not the same perfectly, healthy, living parents that you have who go by the name of Whitlock," Alice explained with an exaggeratedly patient tone.

"Our parents are alive?" I asked, stunned.

Alice felt my forehead, her eyes filling with worry. "Did you eat something funky or drop some acid right after you woke up or something?" she asked, biting her lip.

I just shook my head, forcing a fake grin of reassurance. "Nah, I'm just teasing," I lied. I didn't know what was going on but the last thing I wanted was to be sedated by a shrink.

"And breakfast is served," Edward announced, joining everyone at the table. Peppermint Patty sat next to him, glaring at me the whole time she ate.

"So, Edward," I said, poking the scrambled eggs on my plate. "Whatever happened to Isabella? You know…the love of your life."

He was mid bite when he froze, shooting me a glare.

"Isabella?" Victoria echoed with a haughty pout. "I thought you said I was the only one?"

Edward grimaced, sitting his fork down to defend himself. "You _are _the only one. But you know I have a past…"

I snorted. "A past? Eddie you've slept with two chicks, tops." I laughed.

The entire table, including the kids, stared at me like I'd lost my damn mind. "Three chicks?" I asked in disbelief. He couldn't possibly have slept with any more than that. Edward saw sex as something more emotional than the rest of us. He played it too close to the vest to just share that with any random chick he could find.

"Jasper, he screwed three chicks at once that weekend in Vegas," Alice laughed. "You should remember, you _love_ to tell me the story every time we go to Vegas."

I balked at her. Edward groaned, slapping his hands over his face. Victoria fumed and the kids all started laughing.

That did it. This was not right. I was stuck in some alternate reality or something. No way in hell had Edward ever had the nerve to even talk to three women at once let alone fuck them, simultaneously.

"Can I speak to you in private?" I asked him in urgency.

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Edward followed me out to the garage where I stood staring in horror at the vehicle parked there.

"A minivan?" I choked out as my lips twisted in disgust.

"You have three kids. Of course you drive a minivan." Edward punched my shoulder playfully and leaned against the front of the parenthood-mobile.

"What's up?"

_What's up?_ What was up was that I was staring at a death sentence on wheels rather than my classic 1967 Impala. It was just one of many strange-as-hell things going on around here.

"Three chicks?" I asked, still shocked that there possibility could exist.

He shrugged. "You tell me. I was so drunk I don't remember much but you're the one who was filming it."

My mouth hung open as my mind fantasized all the possibilities with that scenario. "Wait, I filmed it? Why wasn't I partaking?"

"You were married," he reminded me. "I told you marrying your high school sweetheart right after graduation would limit your experiences but you assured me sex with just one woman for the rest of your life would be acceptable."

"Good God," I mumbled. "Other me is a pussy-whipped repressed pansy ass."

"What?" Edward asked.

"You don't find anything wrong here?" I asked, frantically pacing back and forth.

Edward watched me skeptically. He seemed to weigh his thoughts before responding. "What do you find wrong with this situation?" he finally asked.

I slammed on my breaks, skidding to a stop in front of him and waving my hands above my head in exasperation. "Everything!" I yelled.

Edward took a deep breath, folding his arms over his chest. "Okay. Like?"

His condescending prompting was gonna lead to him getting a bloody nose.

"Like, how is it that Alice is here? Alive? How the hell did we get married and have three kids? Kids? Me! I have kids!" The pitch of my voice grew higher the longer I consider the ridiculousness of this situation.

"I know you have kids, Jazz," Edward informed me with a calm voice. "I was there the day you got married, was your best man in fact. And I was there when your kids were born. I'm Jensen's Godfather for crying out loud."

I shook my head and started pacing again. "How! Tell me that, Eddie. What the fuck happened to our lives?"

He watched me silently as I plunged deeper into psychosis. I couldn't blame him, I felt insane. I could only imagine how I looked.

"Maybe it's a spell," I mumbled. "Like when we were in Denali...yeah…that felt pretty damn real." I kept walking back and forth in the small space, paying little attention to my confused brother.

_That has to be it,_ I figured. Edward just hadn't caught on yet, but an illusion spell was the only explanation.

"Let me get this straight," Edward said. "You think our lives are all…a spell? That this is all fake?"

The anger in his voice forced my feet to stall again. The comical confusion in his eyes a moment ago was replaced with genuine hurt. "How can you think that?"

I blanched at his tone. "How can you accept this world?" I threw back. "It's creepy. Everything's…weird. Happy. That's not normal," I argued.

"Not normal? Wait…you're saying what? That you think we belong some place where we're in pain all of the time?"

"Yes," I replied without question. "I'm not saying I prefer it," I added, feeling my stomach twist with the memory of all the bad shit we had lived through lately. "I'm just saying it's what's right. This isn't where we belong, Eddie."

There wasn't any way to soften the blow. I had to figure out how to get us out of here. For all I knew the vamps had someone who could fuck with our minds like that chick in Alaska. We might still be in a facility in Mexico.

"Jasper there is something seriously fucked up in your mind," Edward said, giving me a pitiful look.

I shook my head, trying to laugh off the seriousness in his voice. I was fucked up in the head, but I was right about this.

"You just don't remember right now," I told him, looking down at my hands and for some stupid reason, actually missing the scars I used to have on my knuckles. "But don't worry. I'll figure it out. I'll get us home."

"Jazz…you _are_ home," he insisted.

I looked back up at him and flinched. A head was resting against his shoulder. I hadn't heard anyone come in and Edward didn't seem to notice the person who was apparently sitting behind him.

"Who's that?" I yelled, pointing to his shoulder.

Edward turned his head like he didn't have a clue what I was talking about. His eyebrows rose with worry.

"Who is who, Jazz?" he asked cautiously.

The head on his shoulder turned slowly and my heart jumped to my throat when the cold brown eyes narrowed in on me.

"Iz?" I whispered.

It couldn't be her. She looked dead—like some zombie version of Isabella.

"Are you making up ex-girlfriends of mine again?" Edward huffed. "That was really immature of you, by the way. You know I like Victoria. Hell, I took you ring shopping with me last week."

"Um," I said, trying to ignore Iz staring at me. "Yeah…I…wait, you took me ring shopping?" I asked in disbelief. He nodded. "Dude, could we be more gay?"

I waved my hands for him to forget that offhanded comment. "Never mind, but seriously you don't see her?" I asked, nodding toward the practically still as a statue Isabella Swan leaning against him.

Edward looked to his side once more, mainly to humor me I guessed, and shook his head. "Sorry, Jazz. There's only you and me in this garage."

He started to ramble on some more about the redhead in the house who I couldn't care less about. Iz stared straight into my eyes. I felt like she was staring straight to my soul—calling to me. Everything else faded away around me as she reached out to me.

I took one step toward her.

"Come on Daddy!" A soccer ball bounced against my leg, pulling me from the trance. I turned to find the blonde boy, Alice had called him Jensen, staring up at me with youthful expectance in his eyes.

"Uh…sure," I mumbled, turning back to Edward. Iz was gone.

"What the hell?" I whispered.

"Jasper, promise me you'll get some sleep this week. And lay off finger painting with the kids. I think the fumes are finally getting to your head," Edward teased, leaving me all alone in the garage.

"Something's not right."

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After a long afternoon of me failing to play soccer with the kids who wouldn't stop calling me 'Dad', I was glad to finally find some peace and quiet. Edward left with the touchy bitch-of-a-redhead and I spent the evening in the study with a bottle of Scotch and Google. The longer I searched for shit on the internet the more space I created in the bottle of liquor.

"Where am I?" I thought out loud, staring at images of world events that I couldn't remember. I read of peace treaties and the cure for diseases that were still claiming unfathomable numbers of victims in the world that I was in just yesterday.

I didn't know how much time had passed by a soft knock on the door finally pulled me out of my Wikipedia-haze. Alice stood in the doorway with the baby nestled against her chest.

"I'm gonna put Jared down for bed. Cas and Jensen wanted to know if you would finish reading their bedtime story to them," she said.

I stared at her for a moment without saying anything. I was a little buzzed from the booze and my thoughts were flying like an out-of-control car with cut break lines. A big part of my brain was screaming, _"Danger Jazz Robinson! This is all wrong!"_ And the rest of me felt all warm and fuzzy looking at that woman holding that kid.

_My woman. My kid. _I thought. Was it really that hard for me to want that to be true?

I stood up, running my hands down my face to try to clear the haze. I didn't know what the hell was going on, but there was no sense in ruining it for everyone else in this Bizarro-land.

"Are you feeling okay today?" Alice asked when I passed her. She put her hand on my cheek and pulled me straight into the moment with her. I'd spent every second of this day trying to make sense of this place. With one simple touch, she made me forget why I had even bothered denying that I belonged here.

_Just like my Alice,_ I thought. Then I stopped thinking altogether by leaning down and kissing her soundly on the lips.

It had seemed that no matter what universe I found myself in when my lips touched Alice's, everything else melted away. It wasn't until the baby in her arms started to fuss that I was brought back into this reality; One that I knew, deep down, couldn't be real.

"You taste good," I whispered against her lips.

"Who are you and what have you done with my husband?" she teased.

"I heard he wasn't treating you right so I'm here to rectify the situation," I told her, pressing my crotch against her leg to show her how ready I was for the cause.

She giggled. "Later, after the kids are asleep. Here," she said, thrusting the baby into my arms. "Hold Jared while I go get his bottle."

I caught the kid and held him gingerly as she ditched me right there in the hallway.

"Cockblocker," I grumbled, looking down into a pair of wide blue eyes. He just smirked up at me.

"Daddy! Come finish the story!" The girl shouted. Cas, her name was Cas. Alice had called her Cassie during breakfast and was reminded with an indignant pout that she was to call her Cas instead.

I laughed, remembering a similar little girl with the same stubborn streak.

In the blink of an eye, that girl from my past was standing there in the hallway. My instincts went on into overdrive with the baby in my arms. I jerked back, angling my body to shield Jared from the apparition. I didn't have my arsenal. Alice would probably think I was insane for asking her to bring salt up with Jared's bottle. Didn't matter though, if this ghost was a hostile I'd fight it off and keep this family safe.

"What do you want?" I asked, enunciating each syllable as if the thing was an elderly citizen instead of a ghost. With a pleading stare, it stood still before me. In my mind it was an 'it' but to my eyes it was unmistakably Isabella Swan. Well, a zombie-ghost version of her. She slowly raised her hand toward me, her mouth falling open as if she wanted to speak.

"Daddy!" Cas yelled. The ghost had gone poof, disappearing just as quickly as it had arrived.

I let out a shaky breath and looked down at Jared to make sure he was okay. "Did you see that?" I asked. He cooed up at me as if to say "Nah old man, you're seeing shit." I rolled my eyes.

"Okay," I shouted in response to Cas, shifting Jared around in my arms until I was certain I wouldn't drop him. I walked down the hall to open door that I assumed was the kids' bedroom.

"What are we reading?" I asked as I entered the room.

It was a cute room, obviously designed for kids and I was surprised that to find myself comfortable in it since cute wasn't really my thing. I joined the kids on one of the tiny beds. Oddly it felt like I had done this before.

_This isn't real,_ I reminded myself. _You're just going through the motions. _

"Okay, let's see what we're reading." Cas handed me a book. "Alice in Wonderland," I read, chuckling at the irony of the book choice.

"I can so sympathize with this chick," I mumbled, flipping to the first page. "_Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank_," I read.

"No, Daddy, we're past that part!" Cas insisted with a huff. She grabbed the book out of my hands to flip through the pages.

Jared started fussing. "Oh boy, come on…take it easy on me, kid," I said, standing and rocking him. I wasn't sure where I learned how to do that, but it felt natural. I hadn't spent much time around babies-even at the orphanage, I had distanced myself from anything that couldn't walk and talk.

"Shh," I told him. "There's no need to cry. Mommy's coming right back." I patted his back and he rested his head on my shoulder still sniffling.

"Looks like Daddy can handle it all by himself," Alice said, sneaking up behind me.

I rolled my eyes. "Ha ha."

She smirked at me for a moment with her arms crossed over her chest.

"_Please_," I mouthed and she took mercy on me, smiling as she held her arms out. I was careful to not disturb Jared's relaxed vibe as I passed him back to her. Alice sat in a rocking chair in the corner of the room and fed his him a bottle while I read to the kids. To tell the truth, I don't remember what I read, or even how much time passed as we sat there. I just remembered the calm that washed over me.

I'd look up as the kids reacted to something in the story and see Alice smiling as she watched us—a twinkle in her eye that did things to my insides. By the time we were kissing the kids goodnight and tucking them into bed I couldn't really remember why I was so set on getting out of this place.

Everything felt wrong here, but that's only because if felt good. Happy. I was happy as I followed Alice to our bedroom. So content that I wrapped my arms around her and just enjoyed the moment.

"You ready for bed?" she asked, nuzzling against me.

I shook my head in response. "Not yet."

She laughed. "What? Are you afraid this all will disappear while you sleep?"

I hadn't considered that but now that she brought it up, I was unnerved by the prospect.

_We need to wake the fuck up already,_ my mind told me. _But I like it here too,_ I argued. My emotions were all over the damn map. Did I want this all to evaporate as quickly as it had appeared? Or could I just live in Dreamland forever?

"Jasper?" Alice called, bringing me out of my stupor. "Are you okay sweetheart?"

I gazed into her eyes, letting my worries fade away. I'd face them when it was time.

"Alice, for the sake of humoring me, tell me how we met. How did we fall in love? Get married?"

She gave me a curious look but did as I asked. "Well," she started as she led me to our bed and sat down. "It was our freshman year in high school. I used to sit by myself at lunch because everyone called me a freak," she laughed, "but you weren't afraid of joining me. You marched right over and asked if you could sit with me. You even apologized for being late to offer. I think I fell in love with you the moment you unpacked your lunch."

Her eyes got that far off wistful look in them and I felt mine well up. There was more wonder in a moment of her memory than I had in almost all of mine.

While she filled me in on our early years of dating I recalled my first memories of Sister Mary Alice. It wasn't that much different from what she had described.

I used to sit alone in the orphanage. Everywhere, looking back—at recess, in class, during prayer time, I was always alone. On the outskirts of a crowd, even. Not because people thought me a freak or odd, but because I felt it. Alone. And Sister Mary Alice was the ray of sunshine that forced her way into my gloomy, solitary corner of the world. She'd sit with me at recess and eat with me at lunch. She even knelt next to me during prayer.

"Anyway, you fished the ring back out of the other fortune cookie and profusely apologized to that nice Japanese couple who had accidentally ended up with our order. You had a big speech planned, but by then you were knee-deep in sweet and sour pork and I was laughing so hard that I couldn't see through the tears running down my cheeks. You tossed the ring at me and I've worn it ever since."

I laughed. "That sounds too cheesy to be me."

"It's just the right amount of cheese for you," she countered. "So was that enough of a walk down memory lane? Or do you want me to describe our wedding night? I was really hoping to be naked by now."

I choked at her frankness and felt that blush splash across my cheeks again.

"Naked. I can do naked," I promised, eagerly

"I certainly hope so," she teased. "That one time in sophomore year with our clothes on was just too messy."

"Dear God, where have you been all of my life woman?" I said, pulling her close to me and kissing her neck.

"Right here, Jasper," she whispered. "I've always been right here."

We went slowly, almost agonizingly so. My heart was pounding like it was my first time. I worshiped every inch of her body—losing the boundary between my reality and this one. She was so real to me. She sounded like my Alice, tasted like her. I was desperate to bury myself inside of her and never leave. I wanted to drive away the memory of Rhea's touch, and to claim the woman I had let slip through my fingers in Mexico. All of my life, I denied myself any hope for dreams. I was a broken kid and a lost man. Dreams were never in my cards. For first time in my life I was able to just reach out and touch my dream. She was real. She was sweet. And she was all mine.

"I love you," she cried as she tumbled over the edge, taking me with her.

She loved me. Me? The guy who tapped an ass and was out the door before the chick was done screaming his name. Me? The man who sold his soul to a devil. Me? The guy who didn't deserve one second with this family and this happiness.

I greedily wrapped my arms around her, pressing my face to the crook of her neck.

"I love you too," I whispered in the darkness.

**BiB~BiB~BiB~BiB~BiB~BiB**

The world was all warm and cozy again. I felt my body start to wake up, reveling in the feel of Alice's body against me.

"I could get used to this," I murmured, opening my eyes lazily to drink in the sight of her.

I jumped when the cold dead eyes of Isabella Zombie were staring back at me instead of Alice.

"What do you want?" I shouted, pulling away as she started to reach for me. Her mouth hung open as if she was trying to say something.

"What happened to you?" I asked frantically, flinching when a hand touched my cheek.

"_Jasper_," a raspy voice beckoned. "_Jasper…_"

"No!"

"Jasper…Jasper, what's wrong?" Alice pleaded.

I blinked and Isabella was gone. Alice watched me with terror filled eyes. "What's wrong? You were scaring me."

I shook my head, wrapping her in my arms to quiet her nerves. "It's okay, baby," I whispered. "I'm here. It's okay."

Jared started crying and the sound of kids running down the hall pushed us out of bed. I decided to take a shower to clear my head.

_There's a laugh,_ I thought. _This is all happening inside my muddled brain. _

I let my mind wander as the hot water washed over my skin. It was so strange to see arms and legs free of the battle wounds I'd carried since I was a kid. The tatts were gone too. That settled it. This body wasn't mine.

After getting dressed I found myself staring at Google again, only this time I wasn't looking for world news. I needed to find out information on Iz.

"_Tragic ending to a legendary clan,_" I read. "_Tomorrow marks the anniversary of the massacre that wiped an entire tribe from the earth. The Quileute Nation, once a peaceful village in the costal town of La Push, located in the Pacific Northwest, was slaughtered by unknown creatures in the middle of the night."_

I sat back, trying to figure out what it meant. "How could that happen?" The Quileutes were not only a strong tribe but they had the power of shapeshifting. What creature could possibly destroy werewolves?

"_Authorities claimed to find no __survivors,__ but an urban legend tells that if one walks the sand of First Beach on the eve of the massacre you can hear the cries of a lost girl."_

"Iz," I whispered, filling in some pieces with a giant guess. "So, that's where you are sweetheart."

I made up my mind. I needed to find her, even if what I found was only a ghost of the girl that I once knew. I had to find her.

_Find Isabella. Edward will need her to heal. _Alice's warning was ringing in my head.

My hands froze over the keys on the keyboard. "Shit." What had happened since we left Mexico? I couldn't remember anything after the Impala showing up. I blacked out before we hit the border.

For the hell of it, I Googled 'Carlisle Cullen'. There were no hits. Not a single one. There was some dude in Nebraska named Carlin Collins whose pictured popped up, but other than that Carlisle Cullen didn't exist.

_Double shit,_ I thought. How did I end up in a world without him? Carlisle was the only reason I was still alive.

A soft knock on the door drew me from my tumble down the rabbit hole.

"You okay?" Alice called from the doorway with concern in her voice.

I nodded, offering a fake smile so that she'd leave me alone. "I was thinking of going on an outing with Edward today," I suggested.

She smiled. "Oh that sounds like fun. I'll pack you guys a lunch to take on the road."

"Lunch?" I repeated after she was gone. It was only ten in the morning. How did she know we'd still be on the road in two hours? "Woman is psychic in every universe," I figured.

I opened up MapQuest to plot out the drive to La Push, suddenly realizing I had no goddamn clue where this house was located. For all I knew, we were in Florida or Maine. I looked through the drawers, coming up with nothing but pictures colored by the kids. One of the pictures, titled 'Dad and me', caught my attention for a few heartbeats.

_How is it possible for me to give a shit about these people? _I pondered. _They're not even real._

Finally, in a box on top of the computer desk, I found a letter addressed to me. To my relief, we were in Oregon. It would be a bit of drive to get to La Push, but it was doable. I closed down the computer once the directions were printed out. Then I looked around the study one last time.

There were toys piled in the corner and more pictures thrown all over the floor. I gazed at the loveseat in the corner next to a fireplace, picturing holding Alice in my arms there on a cold winter's night. My heart was aching at the thought of saying goodbye to this world. It was so foreign to me, but I didn't want to let it go at the same time.

"Find Isabella first," I told myself. "Then, you can worry about where you belong."

**BiB~BiB~BiB~BiB~BiB~BiB**

"What is this about?" Edward asked.

"I need you to…it's hard to explain. I just need to look into something and I want some back up," I explained.

"Back up? Jasper I thought you outgrew your dream of wanting to be a detective when you were five."

"Just trust me," I pleaded in exasperation. He conceded and climbed into the passenger's seat.

I grimaced as I slid behind the wheel. Everything was so wrong about driving a minivan. The frame was too high up from the ground. The seat was too soft and didn't squeak when you moved. And to top it all off there was an iPod jack where the tape deck should be.

"What the hell do you do with that?" I asked, pointing to the tiny slot. "How does a guy get some road tunes around here?"

"Here," Edward said, pulling a fancy looking phone from his pocket and plugging it in. "I only have one play list set up on it, though." He scrolled through a few screens, pressing play.

"Hiya everybody," a helium filled, cartoon voice called out. "Say the magic words with me—Miska, mooska, Mickey Mouse!"

A chorus of children joined in to an obnoxious theme song. I gritted my teeth.

"I'd rather listen to Jefferson Starship," I grumbled, yanking the cord from the plug without asking his permission.

"Sorry," he laughed. "I spent all weekend with your kids. They require distraction or else I'm answering every single question that pops into their heads."

"So, let me get this straight you're not really my brother but you're like an uncle to my kids and you tolerate listening to crap like that in the car just to make them happy?"

He nodded. "Yeah."

I snorted. "Bitch."

His brows touched and he looked like I'd just kicked his puppy. "Why did you call me that?"

"You're supposed to call me 'Jerk'," I instructed, waving for him to play along.

"You _are _acting like a jerk but why would I call you that?" he asked stupidly.

"Oh, wow. I need to get out of this place."

I pulled out of the driveway and headed to the interstate.

"So…where are we going?" Edward asked after a handful of minutes.

"I thought we could drive up to La Push…maybe…uh, see the beach."

"You're a horrible liar," he informed me. "And La Push? That's like six hours away. You know we have beaches in this state, right?"

I ignored him, focusing on the road in front of me. Ironically, that made the drive to find Iz felt feel all too familiar. It was a first 'normal' moment since I woke up in this world yesterday morning.

We stopped at a diner to for lunch, because dudes on the road don't eat egg salad sandwiches, even if they were made with love by one of the dudes' wife.

"I'll have a double cheeseburger with fries and a chocolate shake," I ordered.

Edward watched me with raised eyebrows. "For you hun?" the waitress asked him.

"Uh…I'll have what he's having," he said quickly.

"Well, that's a first," I joked.

"I'll say. I thought you cut out red meat two years ago," he shot back. "Alice will be pissed that you cheated." 

I rolled my eyes. _What kind of pussy-whipped__,__ asshole is this other me?_

"It's not like I'm sleeping around on her, it's just a burger. Give me a break?"

He chuckled quietly. "Something's gotten into you lately, hasn't it? What is it? The seven year itch?"

I shook my head. "Nah, just…turning over a new leaf or something like that."

He stayed quiet for the rest of lunch and for the remainder of the drive, which was fine by me. I was preoccupied with the how's and what's of what we would find in La Push. I didn't have any weapons to speak of. I'd grabbed the container of salt from the pantry on the way out, but if what this thing ended up being more ferocious than a ghost, we would be S.O.L.

It was strange finding myself in a world where everyone around me didn't think monsters were real. A safer world. I pressed down on the gas, needing to get there faster. This world was safe and now, thanks to me, there was something in it that was threatening that peace.

I'd do everything in my power to set things right, once more.

**BiB~BiB~BiB~BiB~BiB~BiB**

Dark clouds filled the skies over La Push. It was just after four when we rolled up to the parking lot overlooking First Beach. It looked like a storm was rolling in over the sea.

"You gonna tell me now what we're doing here?" Edward probed as we made our way down to the sand.

"You wouldn't believe me if I tried," I grumbled. "Just tell me if you hear anything…unnatural."

He stopped and stared at me while I just pushed on up the beach. I could feel something shifting in the air. It was more than just the energy from the storm. It was a frenetic sensation, making my bones shiver with anticipation. I looked to the ocean, expecting to see the edges of this world crumbling down.

"Help!" a voice wailed on the wind. "Help me! Please!"

Without thought I ran in the direction of the sound. I found a cave at the end of the beach. Someone was moaning inside the darkness.

"Demon hunting one-oh-one," I told myself as I crept into the dark cave. It went against all of my instincts to just walk into a possible trap but my instincts were all fucked up in this place anyway.

There was enough light to make a body lying on the ground in front of me. I stepped to the side to let more light shine in and gasped when I saw her. She looked like a corpse.

"Iz, is that you?" I asked, taking a cautious step toward the graying body. Her hair was a tangled mess with what looked like streaks of something in it. Blood maybe? I wasn't sure.

I knelt down beside her slowly.

"Iz?" I whispered.

"Come back," she begged with a gnarled, scratchy voice. "Come back, Jasper."

I jumped back at the sound of her voice. Her eyes were open and she reached a hand out to me like she had every time she'd appeared at the house.

"Where are you?" I asked, leaning closer to her.

"Home," she mouthed. "Come back."

Home? I couldn't remember the place. The word made me think of reading bedtime stories and snuggling with my wife in bed. Where was she talking about?

I stood up, wanting to run away from her. I couldn't see the entrance to the cave anymore. Edward had disappeared, too, if he was ever by my side here.

There was a screeching in the darkness—the sound of wheels burning rubber. Headlights clicked on in front of me, chasing me. I turned and ran, seeing the front yard of my house in the distance. Alice and the kids were playing soccer, laughing and happy.

"Get out of the way!" I shouted, waving my arms in the air like a damn nut. "Run! Get out of here!"

Alice turned at the sound of my voice—her smile fading as she see saw me.

"Jasper! No!" she screamed.

I reached her just as the car skidded to a stop. And there it was, rumbling at the ready to drive me straight off the page of this Looney-toon.

"Home," I whispered, seeing flashes of my life in my mind. Edward was weak. Carlisle was smashed to bits. Iz…

"Dear God," I whispered as I remembered that night in La Push. "I've gotta get back."

"Jasper, wait!" Alice yelled grabbing my hand and tugging me back toward the house.

"Your parents are inside. Don't you want to see them?"

My heart stopped at the thought. I could vividly remember the hours, days, years spent in that orphanage in Forks just praying to know what my parents looked like. I had prayed to just see them, to know that I had come from somewhere and not just risen up from the earth like a weed, pulled, and discarded so easily. With all of my soul I wanted to run into that house and just _see _them.

But I couldn't.

This wasn't my life. Those weren't my parents. I had to get into this car right now and drive to the edge of reality.

It was time to wake up.

"I can't," I whispered, feeling a tear slide down my cheek. "I'm sorry, baby," I told her. "I gotta go."

"Jasper…no!" she yelled, pulling me toward her with all of her might.

"I'm sorry, Alice," I said, wishing like hell that I could just kiss her one more time. But if I did then I'd miss my opportunity. I had to wake to up.

"I'm gonna miss you, sweetheart," I promised. I swallowed against the lump in my throat, trying to block out the cries from my fake kids and tears of my fake wife. I pried her fingers from hand before I could change my mind.

The door to the Impala was already open and waiting for me when I ran to it. I jumped into the driver's seat, tears unabashedly rolling down my cheeks.

"Do I have to click my damn heels together or something?" I barked at the steering wheel. The car shifted into gear and sped off.

I didn't look back as I left my dream world in the dust.

**BiB~BiB~BiB~BiB~BiB~BiB**

My body shook in violent uncontrollable waves. My breath, labored.

"Wake up…wake up…wake up…" I chanted, my eyes closed so tight that I saw stars

"Jasper, it's okay to wake up now," a female voice told me. The voice sounded nice, so naturally, I didn't trust it.

"Fuck off," I spat, feeling my entire body convulse against my will.

"Resisting will only make the transition more painful," the voice said. "Please, try to relax and just wake up."

I was freezing—my teeth chattering like those fake teeth you found at joke shops.

"W-w-what the hell is h-h-happening to me," I said through broken breaths.

"You're coming down from the medication," the voice informed me calmly. "Please just try to relax and wake up. I know the dream was probably tempting but it's time to come back to reality now."

_Tempting?_ I thought. _You got that right, sister. It was down right paradise compared to this hell. _

"Where's Isab-b-bella?" I asked. Memories were starting to assault me now. I remembered getting back to Forks and getting the call from Iz that something had attacked the Pack. She wasn't alone when we got there. One of the wolves lashed out when Edward tried to carry her to the car.

"Is that thing still b-b-breathing?" I shouted, not giving a shit if the person trying to help me wake up was following my train of thought.

"Shh, just relax, Jasper," the voice insisted. "Isabella is alright. She's right here in the bed next to you. Why don't you open your eyes and look at her. Come on. Wake up."

Slowly I relaxed my eyelids, prying them open to peek next to me. And there she was, the ghost who had haunted my dream. Isabella lay on her side, staring at me with sad, pleading eyes. Her skin was paler than usual-it was almost sickly gray.

"So when I saw you," I whispered, "it was because my eyes were open here?"

Iz didn't speak; she just stared at me morosely.

"Yes," the voice answered. "You've been in and out of consciousness for about a week. I had to keep you under so that you could heal. Wolf bites are nasty business."

I turned to the voice. "Jessica?" I asked, recognizing the witch from Denali.

She smiled. "Aw, you remembered me. And here I had you pegged as the dude who didn't bother remembering a girl's name…well all but one girl that is." She winked and walked off to do something.

My head was pounding like I'd spent the last twenty four hours as a plastic critter in a whack-a-mole game. Groaning, I laid back down to stop everything from spinning.

"Thank you," Iz whispered.

I looked over at her. The relief and pain swirling in her eyes cut me to the heart. I closed my eyes, nodding a 'you're welcome' to her. Sadly I knew that Alice and our kids, that whole life that I had just experienced, would not be there when I opened my eyes. But Isabella alive and still fighting, would be.

Somehow, that fact comforted me.

**BiB~BiB~BiB~BiB~BiB~BiB**

"What did you dream about?" Charlie asked, handing me a beer. I just shrugged, not interested in sharing my walk down Freud park.

It had been two days since I woke up in the makeshift hospital room upstairs in Emmett's house. I found myself on autopilot ever since; Going through the motions; Trying to remember what was real.

As if the weather wanted to taunt me, today was the first day in months that the clouds had parted over Forks, casting everything in bright sunshine. It went against my mood, completely. Charlie had proclaimed a barbecue was in order to celebrate. Everyone went about grabbing some grub. I kept to myself, watching the scene like I wasn't sure I was actually there awake yet. Emmett was tickling Rosalie and she was retaliating by smacking him upside the head. Charlie was flipping the burgers on the grill, pretending not to look over at his daughter every five seconds. Isabella sat in the corner with her knees clutched against her chest. Edward stood behind her, like some creepy gargoyle.

I puckered my lips when I noticed him narrowing his eyes at my mental comment. His moodiness darkened his glare.

_So, you saw?_ I thought. He nodded, not meeting my eyes.

I wandered over to the table after a bit, faking a smile so that everyone stopped asking me how I felt. What was I supposed to say? That I felt weird? Okay? That I was actually relieved to find out that other place wasn't real?

That a little part of me wished I could go back there and just live out the rest of my life in oblivion.

"Jazz?" Emmett called, tossing a napkin at my face. "You owe us another story."

I looked at my hands, seeing the scars from all the fights I'd gotten into as a kid. The cuts from the times I had to offer up blood for an incantation while fighting evil. And the silver line along the center of my palm that reminded me that my life was no longer my own.

"Did I ever tell you about the time I had a four-way with three chicks in Vegas?" I said, smirking.

**BiB~BiB~BiB~BiB~BiB~BiB**

**A/N: so thanks again for keeping up with this story and for reading! It means a lot to me. **

**This chapter is modeled after the Supernatural episode- (Season 2 Episode 20, _What Is and What Should Never Be_) where Dean is poisoned by a Djinn. The poison of a Djinn causes hallucinations that can be controlled by the Djinn. In this episode Dean sees a life that is opposite to the one that he and his brother live. A life where there are no monsters and no tragic destiny for the Winchester brothers. A life that he knows he was never meant to live.**

**Thanks again! See ya soon!**


	2. Chapter 2: July 23rd, 2010

**A/N: Welcome back. Just to set the scene for this chapter and future chapters, I want to remind you that I like to approach these chapters like episodes of the show. Though they might seem random or disconnected they do fit together, I promise. If you're confused at the start of this one, that's a good thing. ;0)**

**Huge thanks to detriotangel for your awesome beta work! And to Kharizzmatik and Secamimom for being the two most supportive pre-readers a girl could ask for. **

**Twilight and Supernatural are not my property. I'm just having fun.**

**This story is rated M for a reason. Please read responsibly. **

**BiB~BiB~BiB~BiB~BiB~BiB**

"_Hang on to your hopes, my friend  
>That's an easy thing to say, but if your hope should pass away<br>It's simply pretend  
>That you can build them again<br>Look around, the grass is high  
>The fields are ripe, it's the springtime of my life."<em>

**(_Hazy Shade of Winter, _Simon and Garfunkel)**

**BiB~BiB~BiB~BiB~BiB~BiB**

**Case File #34: Phillips Waters**

_"Phillip," the nurse called into the rec room of the Sunny Pines Mental Facility. "You have some visitors."_

_Phillip Waters sat in the corner of the room, staring at the window as if he hadn't heard the woman speak at all. A few fellow patients sat around a table playing checkers. No one noticed the trio walking toward the window._

_"You have to excuse him," the nurse explained as she led the couple over to where Mr. Waters sat. "He goes through bouts of…narrowed focus. Today is one of his bad days."_

_The man in the gray suit nodded in understanding, pulling a chair over to sit beside Mr. Waters. _

_"That will be all," the man's partner informed the nurse. As if she had been given a silent command, the nurse herded the others out of the room, leaving Mr. Waters and his company alone._

_"Mr. Waters, I'm here to ask you about the night your family died," the man in the gray suit said. "I represent a very powerful agency that specializes in such claims."_

_Phillip Waters wasn't interested in listening to the glorified insurance salesman. He'd talked to more than enough people about this subject. He was done talking about it._

_Nothing would bring them back._

_"Mr. Waters," the man's partner, the woman in the blue skirt, had started in. "Tell us what you know of a Carlisle Cullen."_

_Mr. Waters sucked in a sharp breath at the mention of that name. In all the years and countless interviews that he'd given about the tragic event that changed his life, he had never once mentioned that name._

_"It was him," Mr. Waters whispered. "He took them. He's the reason they're gone."_

_"What did he do, Mr. Waters?" the man asked, seeking clarification for his cause._

_Phillip Waters sighed, focusing his sight on the gently shifting leaves on the tree just beyond the windowsill. _

_"He told me something bad was coming. That my family wasn't safe. I trusted him." The last was spoken in an agonized breath._

_"What was he protecting you from?" the woman pressed. _

_"He wouldn't kill the demon. It had my wife and daughters trapped in our home. I begged him to just kill it. He had some damn fool idea that he could get the demon out without killing the person it was possessing."_

_A tear slipped down his cheek. _

_"Who was the demon possessing?" the man asked. _

_"Me," he confessed, pain twisting his features as he continued. "The thing was in me. I begged him to kill me while I had it under control, but he wouldn't. He said they'd be safe but…it took over… And I…" He looked at his hands, seeing the blood that had covered them that night—the blood of his wife and daughters._

_"Thank you, Mr. Waters," the man in the gray suit said. "That is all the information we need from you."_

_"Be at peace," the woman said, touching her hand to Mr. Waters' shoulder. _

_The partners left and Mr. Waters returned his attention to the tree outside. So peaceful. So welcoming._

_"Did you need me to sign any documents?" the nurse asked, following the agents to their car._

_"No. We were never here," the woman informed her, shaking her hand._

_A loud thump made the nurse jump in fright. She ran to the side of the building, the visitors already forgotten as she the investigated the sound. She screamed in terror when she found the broken body of Phillip Waters sprawled across the lawn. _

**BiB~BiB~BiB~BiB~BiB~BiB**

**(July 23rd, 2010)**

**Lesson #12**: Never Trust Your Eyes

**Bella PoV (Meridian, Idaho)**

The sky was clear and sunny when we drove into town. A lifetime as a hunter's daughter and six days as Edward Cullen's new partner told me that this was unusual weather.

"So teach me, 'Oh, Wise One'," I said with exaggerated admiration, "what does sunshine mean in the world of demon hunting?"

Edward shot me a look out of the corner of his eye but returned his focus to the road before responding.

"It means, we're not dealing with anything mystical."

"Aren't all things supernatural mystical?" I challenged. "It's not like we're looking for something normal."

He shook his head, clicking the signal to turn left. "Not necessarily. Usually there are the mystical, magical, spectral baddies and then there are just… _monsters_."

His voice rumbled over the word 'monsters' like it was a curse. I didn't like the claw-sporting bad guys anymore than he did, but his anger seemed more deeply rooted than mine. More specifically he seemed to have a particular monster in mind.

"You're not a monster, Edward," I assured him quietly, remembering the discussion we had regarding his time in South America.

He smirked—a condescending twist of his lips that warned I was going to be pissed at him in a second.

"Actually, I wasn't referring to myself. I was thinking about your ex." He laughed at the aggravated look that I threw him in response.

"Oh." I didn't have any further input on that subject. I chose silence, deciding to stare out the side window in hopes that he wouldn't want to talk about Jake. My chest felt heavy at just the thought of him.

"You wanna talk about it?" he pried, still more focused on the road than me.

I sighed, finding myself in the oddest state of indecision lately. My father had once accused me of a being a touchy teenager not long after we moved to Sequim. I couldn't help but agree with him now. I felt so confused, lost. I wanted answers but somehow I knew the more information I had the worse I would feel. I didn't know where Jake was or how my stay at La Push had ended.

"Remind me, again. Why, why he was okay with me leaving?" I felt like a perpetual Alzheimer patient. I vaguely remembered the night I tried to run away. Everything was a haze until a week ago when I awoke to find Edward sitting by me in bed. Whenever I asked anyone about how I got out of La Push they just said, "It's not important. You're safe now."

The muscle in his jaw tightened for a second. "He didn't really have a choice," he finally replied.

"Liar." I punched his shoulder playfully. "I'll figure it out eventually, you know. And then you won't get to act like you know so much more than me."

He laughed—a forced sound if ever I heard one. "I hope you do, Bella."

I gritted my teeth at the sound of my childhood nickname. It brought back every buried memory of my past, the good and the bad, making me feel like a weak kid who was still haunted by her mother's death. I had no clue why he was using it now and, even more oddly, I couldn't explain why I didn't tell him to stop.

"This is the place." He parked in front of a typical suburban house with a vibrant green lawn and yellow daisies blooming in bunches around the front porch.

"Yep. Looks like a house of evil to me," I joked. "White picket fences have always given me the creeps," I confessed as we sat there.

Edward laughed. "Me too. A little, too Stepford for my taste."

"Do you hear anything?" I casually scanned the neighborhood.

Edward pursed his lips, deep in concentration. "I hear a cat in the backyard but…that's it. No voices, no breathing and no thoughts."

I shook my head, climbing out of the rental car. "I still can't believe you can hear people's thoughts."

He jumped out of the car and stepped to the trunk before me. I gasped like a toddler being told "Boo" and he chuckled.

"And that," I complained, elbowing his side, "that's so fucking annoying. Only Superman should move at the speed of light."

"Don't hurt yourself, Bella," he teased, knowing that I would be the only one feeling any discomfort from that jab.

"Maybe Madame Tami will give me worker's comp for being hurt on the job?"

He laughed again. "I'm pretty sure beating up on your partner isn't covered in her insurance policy."

He rifled through the various bags he'd thrown into the trunk. "Damn, I miss the Impala," he grumbled under his breath. That was easy enough to understand. I remembered the arsenal the Cullens had built in the trunk of that car. It would come in handy on these hunts.

"Has Emmett said anything about his progress?" I grabbed a dagger from the duffel in front of me and Edward snatched it out of my hand, tossing it back into the bag.

"You won't need a weapon," he proclaimed with misogynistic authority. "As far as the car goes, Em says it'll be done when it's done."

I didn't really give a shit about the car anymore. His assumed authority pissed me off. I grabbed the dagger again and slapped his hand when he tried to take it back.

"What I won't need is your permission, Cullen," I seethed.

He put his hands up in surrender, though that signature Cullen-cocky smirk twisted his lips. "Didn't mean to offend, Miss."

Groaning I pushed past him and walked around the side of the house to the back door.

"What are we looking for again?" I asked when he joined me a second later.

"An Angiak," he explained, "it's a reanimated dead child who will feed from its mother's breast until it is strong enough to shape shift into animals and then kill off the remaining members of the family."

I swallowed hard as bile rose in my throat. "That's disgusting."

"That's just what it is, Bella," he countered bluntly. He tapped against the door with his fist. The door flew open as if a guy twice his size had kicked it in with all of his might.

"Ahem." I cleared my throat when he started to walk in first.

"What?" he looked and sounded genuinely perplexed.

"Ladies first." I reminded him politely.

He rolled his eyes but took a step back, motioning for me to get on with it already. I stepped into the kitchen tentatively, feeling like a kid breaking the rules. I knew we were carrying false ID's that would supply anyone who found us with the evidence that we had authority to be in here, but I still felt like a peeping Tom walking through someone else's house uninvited.

"What does Tami want with this one?" I threw the thought out there, mainly to distract myself from the coziness that I felt walking through the quaint little kitchen. A family lived here and our presence was an assurance that their life was about to be turned upside down if it wasn't already.

"What she wants with all of them, I guess. She helps them pass on, finds them a safe place to exist and rehabilitates the ones she can."

"But this thing is evil," I argued. "She can't possibly hope to…let it go?"

Edward gazed at me with a detached look on his face and then shrugged as if he didn't have comment on the subject.

"Okay," I mumbled, walking through the kitchen into a family room. I heard Edward opening cabinet doors in the kitchen.

The living room was a lot like the kitchen—another indication that a family inhabited this space. There was a family picture hanging above the fireplace. I stared at it, seeing a mom, a dad, two daughters and a young son. I wondered if the boy was the one who had been possessed by this evil curse. My heart broke for the loss of such a young life.

I inspected the furniture, walking further into the room without much concern. I had a biologically-advanced, almost-monster for a partner. He'd let me know if shit was about to go down.

There were books on the mantel below the family portrait and I scanned the titles.

"The classics," I noted, curious to know more about the people in that picture. I was startled when I turned around to find a woman lying on her side on the couch. She had a blanket covering her and she looked like she was sleeping.

_Edward said no one was here, _I thought cautiously. _Maybe he just can't hear her dreams?_

"Miss?" I said, reaching out to shake the lady awake.

In the blink of an eye Edward's hand yanked my arm back just as a small creature leaped out from under the blanket. I shrieked in terror as Edward swung me around behind him. I didn't get a clear look at the beast, but I was pretty sure it wasn't in the shape of a kid. Which meant the woman on the couch was probably the mother and she wasn't sleeping, but dead.

I looked to the portrait again and confirmed my suspicion—it was the same woman. I felt ready to vomit, but held it in as Edward snarled at the monster. The creature growled back and I cowered behind Edward like some toddler.

_Get it together, Isabella,_ I thought, mentally slapping myself for being such a chicken. _You're Charlie Swan's daughter. You've fought monsters all your life. _

I peeked around Edward's shoulder and saw that the thing had shifted into the form of a dog—a mangy, grayish dog with blood dripping from his fang-like teeth. I could smell death on the beast's breath as it advanced on us.

My body was shaking with fear without any conscious command from me.

_We're gonna die. _

The dog barked and I was on my knees with my hands over my head in a split second. I didn't hear Edward fight it. I wasn't aware of anything else going on. Panic and terror had seized me. I knelt on the floor—a screaming mess.

"Bella? Can you hear me?"

I came to, staring into hazel eyes. I nodded weakly, momentarily at a loss as to where I was. This all felt too familiar—just like the night a week ago in the guest bedroom in Emmett's house. Here I was, waking up from what felt like a bad dream and Edward was hovering over me like a mama bear protecting her cub. He cradled me awkwardly across his lap, anxiety so acute in his gaze that I felt my own muscles tense with worry.

I didn't speak for a minute, finding myself lost in the shimmering highlights of his hazel eyes.

"Weren't your eyes green before?"

Those eyes in question softened at my unexpected query and he released a strained laugh.

"Yeah."

I felt his fingers slide through my bangs. I suspected he was surreptitiously inspecting my head for injuries.

"I'm okay," I assured him. "Now, explain that to me?" I gestured toward his eyes, honestly needing a distraction.

He smirked, seemingly content to be holding me against him while we talked. "It has to do with what Marcus did to me. I don't know what it is exactly, but Tami keeps telling me _one day_ I'll figure it out."

I snorted at that statement. Madame Tami could be a little Yoda with her prophecies.

"Do you feel okay to stand?" I could see worry creeping back into his gaze.

I nodded, trying to ignore the flutters in my tummy when he helped me to my feet.

"I'm sorry I dropped like a weak-kneed sissy." I could feel my cheeks flush with embarrassment. "What happened?"

My eyes fell on the mother lying on the couch and I quickly looked away before I got sick. I had only looked for a second but the image was burned into the backs of my eyelids. The center of the woman's body looked like had been gnawed away. All the years of helping my father with research for the cases he worked and even all the training Edward had tried to give me the last couple of days hadn't prepared me for seeing this stuff in person.

_How do they not allow this shit to affect them? _I thought, eyeing Edward speculatively. _He doesn't seem bothered at all. _

"It was feeding when we got here," Edward explained, kneeling next to the body to survey the damage. "Looks like it was chowing down on the mom, which means it's advanced to the next stage."

I gagged, swallowing back the bile that tried to surface.

"How come you didn't hear it?" I asked between deep, steadying breaths.

"I did," he snapped in frustration, "it was the cat in the backyard. I miscalculated the amount of time since the first sighting. It's probably been fully charged to shift for days now."

I swallowed hard at the thought that this thing could move so easily in plain sight. "Is it still here?" I whispered, glancing around like I was in a haunted house.

He shook his head, pulling out his phone. "Hello, this is Agent Nash, F.B.I." he announced to whoever he was talking to. I ignored the rest of the conversation, assuming that he was reporting the body.

I busied myself with looking anywhere but at the dead mother on the couch. I had enough memories of my own mother's corpse to last me a lifetime.

"The unit will be here in about ten minutes," he informed me in a clipped tone.

"It's not your fault, Edward." I offered as I put my hand on his arm to console him.

The contact of my hand on his skin seemed to sooth him in some way. He gently ran his fingers reverently over the back of my hand as if I were made of lace

"I…uh…thanks," he murmured, continuing to pet my fingers. My skin felt tingly in the path of his touch. I found myself just as lost in the moment as he seemed to be.

A knock on the front door made both of us jump. I pulled my hand back, tucking my bottom lip between my teeth. Edward was all business the second he answered the door—his personality shifting effortlessly to air the confidence and authority of an F.B.I. agent. That was my cue to leave the room. It was enough of a challenge to pass off Edward, who was only a few weeks past his twentieth birthday, for an authentic agent. I was barely legal and I looked it. There was no way anyone would honestly believe I got that kind of training and job placement right out of high school.

I walked off into the kitchen, hoping no one tried to talk to me. I wasn't good with lying which was funny because I used to be a pro at it. While my mom possessed me, even I had a hard time figuring out whether I was telling the truth or not. In more recent days, I had struggled with hiding any truths in me at all—a complete one-eighty from my previous demeanor. I felt like a damn open book, on display and translated into every language for anyone, anywhere that wanted a read on me. I couldn't pinpoint the reason why I felt that way. It didn't matter, really. What had mattered was that I let Edward take the lead and play pretend while we were on a case.

I scanned the kitchen, feeling like it was an entirely new room to me now it seemed unfamiliar. Empty. There were several photos posted on the refrigerator door. I studied the faces on each, recognizing the mom from the other room in several of them. She had looked so happy.

"The team is here to take the body down to the coroner's. We're not needed for the autopsy, but I told them to call us if any other cases come their way," Edward informed me.

I noticed that he had put on plastic gloves. No doubt for the crime scene inspection. His fingertips were covered in blood.

I turned my attention back to the photos, feeling green around the gills. He looked from me to the fridge as if he was trying to deduce what I found so damn interesting.

"I think these might be family members." I pointed to the pictures.

"Good. Take one that has the most faces in it. We can use it to match profiles and maybe narrow down possible addresses."

I did as he instructed, taking a picture that looked like a family reunion shot. I also snagged a picture of just the mother and the young boy. I couldn't explain why I did it. Something inside of me just couldn't leave it behind. 

**BiB~BiB~BiB~BiB~BiB~BiB**

I had really hoped we wouldn't need to get a room, but the 'thing' was still on the loose. I would need a place to sleep for the night if I were to continue on tomorrow.

"The Iron Maiden Motel?" I read in horror.

_There will never be enough Purell in the world, _I thought.

Edward laughed, shrugging his shoulders sheepishly. "I'm sorry, I keep forgetting you're not Jazz."

I bit my tongue as he grabbed the suitcases and headed for the lobby.

_Should I be offended that he keeps thinking I'm his brother? _I wondered. _Or should I be flattered that he is that comfortable working with me?_

_Edward Cullen is so damn confusing_, I decided as I followed him into the building.

"Hi, we need a room," Edward told the lady at the front desk.

I looked around the dingy lobby suddenly feeling the need to shower.

_Why do men find these places inhabitable? _

"You two married?" The woman ogled Edward like he was steak and she was a starving jackal.

"Yes," I shouted greedily, wanting to slap myself the second the word left my lips.

Edward angled toward me with his mouth agape like a codfish. I wasn't about to give him the satisfaction of watching me scramble out of this one, so I sold it for all it was worth.

"Newlyweds, in fact," I embellished, linking my arm through his and offering the clerk a sickeningly sweet smile.

"Oh," she frowned as she took Edward's credit card. "Congratulations, Mr. and Mrs. Nash."

"Nash?" I whispered as she stepped into a back room to run the card.

"Yeah," he whispered back. "Graham Nash…from Crosby, Stills, and Nash."

I blinked up at him in confusion. "Why?"

"It's this thing…Jazz does. He favors musicians," he explained.

"Phony credit cards?" I mouthed and he nodded. "I guess there's no real income in this line of work, huh?" he nodded again.

"Plus, hunters don't really exist," he was utterly unfazed, as if his real name and his plight to make the world safe didn't matter in the grand scheme of things.

"Okay, I have you two set up for the honeymoon suite," the clerk handed the card back to Edward along with a key that had a plastic heart keychain attached to it.

"Oh, joy," I declared with mock enthusiasm.

I squawked as Edward playfully smacked my ass. "Come on, pumpkin," he cooed.

"Aw, wait till we're in the room, darling." I slapped my hand to his cheek and pinching it as hard as I could. He probably didn't feel a thing.

He stepped back to let me exit first. "We're in room fourteen," he read from the plastic heart attached to the key. The rooms were tucked away at the other end of the parking lot.

"What was she thinking?" I rolled my eyes when he laughed at my not-so-subtle question.

"What were _you_ thinking?" he threw back. "Married? _Us_? Bella, we'd be Kathleen Turner and Michael Douglas in two seconds if we ever got hitched."

"Ha, ha," I agreed wholeheartedly. "I didn't like the way she was looking at you," I grudgingly confessed.

"Aw," he teased, wrapping his arm around my shoulders and planting a sloppy-wet kiss on my cheek. "Don't worry, honeybunches. There's nobody in the world for me but you."

I squeaked and then elbowed him in response, ignoring the flurry of tingles in my tummy at the feel of his lips against my skin.

"Why won't you tell me what she was thinking?" I pressed. "What are you hiding?"

He sighed; shrugging like it was no big deal. "She was thinking I looked hot. Then she was envisioning all the kinky shit she wanted to do with me. Then, she was mentally sulking because she found out we were together."

"Just sulking?" I felt cheated. I had pictured the chick tripping down a well at the thought of her just ogling him. She could have at least imagined me getting hit by a car or something.

"Yeah, she realized there wasn't any point in dreaming about it once she knew you were my girl."

My heart skipped a beat, no doubt due to the stressful day I had just survived. "Why?"

He smirked, glancing at me like I was 'coo coo for Cocoa Puffs'. "You don't see yourself right, do you?"

We stopped in the middle of the parking lot, having a conversation with our eyes that, truly, confused me. He was trying to tell me something. I could tell he was also desperate to riddle out what I was thinking. I gave up and started toward the room.

"You know, I think this is only the third hotel I've ever stayed in my life." I rambled in order to fill the time it took me to walk across the lot. Edward was being courteous and matching my stride. I felt like some kid forcing him to crawl at my speed.

"Yeah, I remember Charlie wasn't big on traveling much."

I laughed. "You can say that. To me, it was more that he wasn't big on letting me roam too far from home."

"Can't say I blame him on that one," Edward mumbled so softly that I wasn't sure he meant for me to hear it.

"It's this one." He leaped ahead of me with one step and unlocking the door before stepping aside to let me in first. I entered just as he turned on the light. It was a testament of my trust in this man to not just turn tail and run right back out of the room.

"What the fuck is this place?"

"Um…" he muttered but seemed just as stunned as me.

It was like we had walked into an eighties-hairband music video set. The walls were painted blood red with black spikes jutting out around the ceiling. Black velvet curtains hung all the way down to a matching black carpet. The king sized bed in the center of the room had white linens with splotches of red across them.

"That's not blood is it?" I asked in horror.

"I'm sure it's just…a compliment to the spikes," he offered reassuringly.

I stared, open-mouthed, at the room for a moment longer.

"Why don't you unpack," he offered. "Or not." he added hastily after I threw him a what-you-talkin'-bout-Edward look.

"I'll go pick something up for dinner. What are you in the mood for?"

"Anything but intestines," I tried to joke, instantly regretting it when I remembered that poor mother's torn body. It was a photo finish to the toilet.

"I'll pick something up," he shouted, between my loud heaves. "I'll wander around a bit to give you some time to uh…work back up your appetite."

I didn't even hear him close the door. 

**BiB~BiB~BiB~BiB~BiB~BiB**

An hour later, he walked through the door with take out containers from four different fast food places.

"I didn't know what you would want," he supplied without me asking why he had been so generous with food options.

I started to ask him why he didn't just pick whatever he was in the mood for. "Right," I said, answering my own question—Edward didn't eat anymore.

We sat at the table next to the curtains and I assembled my feast. It was a touch unnerving to have him just sitting there staring at me while I ate, but I was too hungry to care.

"I just can't get over the fact that you don't eat…or sleep." I shook my head, munching on a taco that actually wasn't half bad.

He shrugged. "I don't breathe either," he pointed out, matter of fact.

I stopped chewing and stared at him for a minute.

"Yeah, what's up with that?" I began sampling some chilly fries from another bag.

Edward laughed, a wry smile twisting his lips. "You never change, do you?"

My cheeks flushed at his words but I was suddenly too focused on my tacos to see whether he noticed my blush.

"What's up is that I was changed. Like my eyes…my body is…evolving," he explained with a serious edge to his voice.

"What exactly is Marcus? What are you…changing into?" Dad had given me the old standby of "it's hard to explain", but I knew they knew more than anyone was telling me. I couldn't see any monstrous changes in him yet. Well, other than the no breathing, eating or sleeping thing. He was still just Edward to me.

He was silent and still for so long that I thought he might have left the room. I looked up, expecting to see anger in his eyes. I hadn't anticipated that there would be fear.

"I don't know," he whispered in agony. "I don't really know what I am."

The conversation had gone from teasing to testimonial in no time flat. I shoved the take out container away and grabbed his hand that was resting on the table.

"You're still you, Edward," I defended. "No matter what happens to your body…"

"Like that little kid who just ate his mother's entrails?" he interrupted. He yanked his hand away from me and started pacing. He was moving so fast I only could catch a glimpse of his silhouette when he turned at my end of the room.

_I can see what Jazz means about the mood swings,_ I thought. He was making my damn head swim with the highs and lows on this trip.

"I'm not _human _anymore, Bella," he ranted, rambling excuses and curses as he flew back and forth in the room. "I'm nothing…I'm a monster…I wish Marcus had just killed me. Everyone would have been better off…"

I quietly stood up and stepped into his path. He skidded to a stop inches from me, a furious scowl twisting his features.

"I wouldn't have been," I argued softly, feeling my eyes well with inexplicable tears.

All at once the fight was drained out of him as we stood there.

"Déjà vu," I shook my head and dabbed at my tearing eyes.

"Bella." He reached out for me, but retreated into himself as I sat down, moving further away from him.

"What the hell happened to us, Edward?" I laughed without humor. "Here I am, all emotional and weepy. And there you are…well actually you've always been a little melodramatic."

He scowled while I blew my nose.

"People change." He rejoined me at the table with a somber mood settling between us.

"Yeah." I remembered the last person who had changed so dramatically on me. "Jake sure changed," I mumbled, freezing mid bite when I realized what I had just said.

"What do you remember about your time at La Push?" He made the question sound effortless and light as he fiddled with the discarded paper wrapper from my straw.

I blinked at him in confusion. "What was I supposed to forget about?"

There was the slightest tremor in the muscles around his eyes as he looked at me. I almost would have sworn I had imagined it. He masked it with a wide grin and a sly wink.

"Nothing at all, Bella." 

**BiB~BiB~BiB~BiB~BiB~BiB**

The shrill ring of the phone caused me to spring straight up in bed. I frantically rolled to the side of the bed and tumbled face-first on to the floor.

"Uh," I huffed as the air was knocked from my lungs.

"Hello?" Edward answered the phone—which I now realized was on the other side of the bed from where I was.

"Yes, this is Agent Nash," he replied. "We'll be there shortly."

He hung up and ghosted over to where I was still sprawled out on the floor. He clicked on the bedside lamp, the sudden brightness stinging my eyes.

"You need help?" he half offered, half teased.

"Nope. I just wanted to get in some Yoga before heading out," I said, stretching as I stood.

He chuckled. "You should shower."

I balked at his command and he looked abashed as he realized what he'd said.

"I mean…you should because we need to leave…not that _should_…you smell nice…wonderful actually…"

I laughed at his backtracking ramblings. "Edward, shut up. I'm going to take a shower. We humans have to do those things," I grabbed my bag from the floor, "even if we do smell _wonderful_."

I could hear his groan through the door.

Twenty minutes later we were pulling into the parking lot of the local hospital.

"So why did they call us at four in the morning?" I yawned as I followed him to the morgue.

"It's actually a hit from one of the faces in the photo you got from the house. I flagged the names after you went to bed. The coroner said that this body was brought in an hour ago. They wouldn't have associated the connection so quickly without the alert," he explained with a different edge to his voice than when we were in private.

"Why do you do that?"

"What?"

"You go all, Commando-ward when you're around officials," I pointed out.

His left eyebrow quirked up in response, "_Commando-ward_?" he echoed.

"Yeah, all business and stuff," I further explained, feeling rather stupid as I did.

"It's called a con, Bella," he said slowly, "you have to play the part to be the part."

"Keep it up, Eddie," I warned, "one of these days I will find a way to hurt you."

I expected him to laugh but that damn silent intensity thing fell between us again. I walked on, into the to the morgue without stopping to analyze the moment any further.

"Agent Nash," the medical examiner shook Edward's hand as we entered the morgue.

"Hi, what do we have?"

"Canine attack," the examiner said. "Looks like the family Scooby wasn't satisfied with just the snacks anymore."

_Oh, yay, _I thought._ A medical examiner that chose his career path after watching too many cartoons as a kid._

I felt an encore from my earlier digestive evacuation setting in.

"Do you mind if we examine the body alone?" Edward asked, probably noticing how pale I was getting.

"Sure," the examiner said, "just holler if you need anything."

He left the room and Edward was immediately behind me with a chair. "Sit."

I followed his request without question.

"I'm such a weakling now," I moaned, slapping my hands to my face.

"This stuff takes time to desensitize to," Edward offered sympathetically. "Don't beat yourself up over it."

"Shut up, Edward." I grumbled.

He chuckled, pulling on some plastic gloves.

"What are you looking for?" I fanned myself as I fought off the dry warmth that was trying to overcome my body. "I thought this thing is pretty cut and dry with what it is?"

"I guess it's just force of habit." He inspected the bites around the dead man's abdomen. "I'm not used to already knowing what we're dealing with before the bodies start showing up."

"Yeah, remind me again why Tami needs us?" The explanation of my current "employment" was locked away in that hazy blur of the time before last week. Somehow I had ended up as part of a 'creature capture and release program' without knowing it.

"Why does Tami ever need anything?" he asked. "According to her we're 'meant to be partners'."

My brain took that description straight to a kinky and inappropriate place. I blushed and hid my face behind my hand—never more thankful that Edward couldn't read my mind.

"That's interesting," he mumbled.

"What?" I squeaked, terrified that he suddenly could see my dirty thoughts.

"The body was exsanguinated. This thing didn't just kill. It…_drank_."

"Drank?" I echoed, recalling the research I had studied on the car ride from Forks. "But it's just here to kill off the family members, right? It's not like a…a…_vampire_, is it?" I laughed. "There's no such thing as vampires."

Edward froze at my words, casting a wounded glance in my direction before finishing up with the body.

"What?" I challenged. "Have you ever met a vampire?"

"Doesn't matter," he snapped brusquely. "I need to get back to the hotel. Map out the radius of this thing's hunting."

He stomped out of the room before I could respond. "O-kay," I said to the empty room. "I'll add that to the list of weird shit I don't understand."

I shoved off from the chair with a heavy sigh.

_Why couldn't I be like normal girls? _I lamented. _I'd be off with some high school sweetheart and worried about what to wear on my date instead of why my non-human, childhood best friend was sulking out of an autopsy._

"Thanks so much, Charlie Swan," I grumbled sarcastically.

I caught movement out of the corner of my eye and stalled. Things moving in a morgue were never good in the world I lived in.

"Hello?" I whispered, stupidly. I could see the obituary now- _Dumb brunette finds herself dead in a morgue after trying to have a conversation with her ghostly attacker._

_Brilliant, Isabella,_ I chastised myself.

I heard something shuffle on the other side of the examination table. My heart hammered in my chest and my throat constricted, making it impossible for me to speak. In my mind, I was screaming for help.

I glanced at the counter, finding an array of knives. I wasn't sure I could get to them in time to defend myself. My fingers flexed at the thought of trying to reach the 'would be' weapons.

I squeaked when the small animal jumped up on to the table in front of me. Adrenaline was coursing through me, making me feel lightheaded when I realized I had nothing to fear. It was just a cat.

"You're such a chicken," I laughed at myself.

The tabby sat back, purring quietly as it looked up at me.

"Aw." I reached out to pet it.

The cat's head bobbed back as my fingers touched its fur, but it leaned into my touch quickly. The quiet purr somehow put my nerves at ease.

"Maybe I should get Edward a cat," I joked, stroking the soft fur under the cat's jaw.

Without warning the cat's head snapped around. I screamed when two very sharp teeth sunk into my pinky finger.

The cat went flying back from me in the blink of an eye and I tumbled to the floor from some invisible force. I saw the black sneakers from under the examining table and heard the cat hiss as Edward growled.

I tried to crawl toward the fight to offer him back up.

"Bella(,) no!" he shouted.

I ducked just in time for the cat to jump over me, scraping its claws across the backs of my hands as it made its escape.

"Are you fucking stupid?" he barked, grabbing my elbow and pulling me to my feet forcefully.

I shook in fright, more so from his verbal attack than the beast's.

"I thought…"

"No, you didn't think! Damn it, Bella!" he pulled me close to inspect the bite. "You knew that thing is dangerous! Why the hell didn't you just…how could you think it was safe?"

He stormed out of the room for a second time, yanking me along behind him.

"Edward." I felt like I was about to be sick.

"One of these days you're gonna trust the wrong damn thing, Bella," he warned. "And I won't be able to protect you from it."

I couldn't care to riddle out what he was talking about in that moment. I just bent over and puked. 

**BiB~BiB~BiB~BiB~BiB~BiB**

I took a shower when we got back to the motel, cleaning the cuts on my hands with some rubbing alcohol.

"I know what you told us but…I don't think I can do it," Edward argued into the receiver of his phone.

He glanced up at me as I exited the bathroom, but quickly turned his attention to the television. The room was filled with a strange awkwardness all of a sudden. The usual teasing atmosphere between us had been upset since my vampire comment in the morgue. Edward was cold and distant the entire afternoon, nearly biting my head off when that thing attacked me. His shoulders were tensed; his expression strained as he spoke to Tami.

I took that as a cue for me to finish getting ready for bed in the bathroom. I left the door ajar far enough to let the steam from the shower I had just taken filter out.

"Look, I understand what you want me to _try_ to do," his voice a low, threatening hiss, "but if that _thing_ tries to hurt her again I'm not going to be able to control myself."

I froze. _Her? Is he talking about me? _

"I know it's just acting on instincts," he went on, "and that's what I'm struggling with too. I can't control it when I'm with her. Why are you forcing me to have her here? Do you _want_ me to kill these creatures?"

In a moment of panic I slammed the door. I stared at my reflection in the mirror, holding my breath like I was frightened Edward could read my breaths the way he read other people's minds.

_He can't control himself when he's around me?_ I mentally echoed. _He's acting on instincts?_

I didn't want to read too much into it. Hell, I didn't want to even think about it at all. Was he talking about instincts that were a part of the new changes in him or instincts that had to do with me?

Like protecting me.

I shook my head, releasing an aggravated breath. I ran the brush through my wet hair before opening the door.

I blanched, taking a step back when I was suddenly face to face with Edward.

"Whoa," I gasped, putting one hand on his chest to steady myself.

He watched me with unsettling intensity for a second then turned his focus on the hand resting on his chest. The scratches and bite didn't look so bad now that I had washed and disinfected them.

"How are you feeling?" He stared down at my hand without moving.

"Peachy," I replied sarcastically.

He peeked up at me with sad eyes. My heart flip-flopped at the sight.

"I'm sorry I yelled at you," he whispered, tracing the cuts on my hand with one of his fingers.

My brain went silent for a second and I just grunted in response.

"I should have realized it was there. I think it shifted into something so small I didn't recognize it. When I heard the cat purr…I'm just glad I got to you in time." His finger ran down to my wrist where four purplish marks were starting to appear. He matched his fingers to the shadows on my skin.

"Don't know your own strength," I teased, trying to lighten the mood.

"Yeah," he breathed, releasing me with a frown. He walked back into the bedroom and stood by the window.

I had to admit the room didn't look as bad with the curtains pulled open.

"What did Tami say?" I sat on the bed and flicking through the channels on the TV mindlessly.

"She told me if I killed it she was gonna make me a guinea pig for her next potion."

I giggled at that mental image. "Maybe she'll make something that will help you sleep," I teased, throwing him a wink.

"Sleeping is overrated." There was a secret smirk playing about his lips that made me wonder what he did at night when I was unconscious.

"You're cute when you blush," he noted, turning his attention back to the world outside while my cheeks flamed. My heart skipped a beat for a second time tonight, my muscles relaxing as the tension seemed to lessen in the room.

"What is her plan? What does she think we can do?"

His shoulders raised and fell. "I don't know. There's no real point in keeping the thing alive. The Angiak has one goal in its existence. It's born of betrayal and it seeks to destroy those responsible. Once that is done it ceases to exist."

"So…she just wants us to stop it from killing these people, then?"

"No."

I rolled my eyes. "Oh. Thanks for clearing that up." I clicked the TV off and started to turn down the covers on the bed.

He laughed, closing the curtains and turning back toward me. "I think she's okay with it killing them so long as we stop it from killing the last member of the family."

"Why?"

"If it succeeds in killing off the family then it will go poof." He snapped his fingers like ending this thing would be as easy as _Jeannie Nelson_ blinking her eyes.

"And she _doesn't _want this thing to go poof?" I reiterated feeling too confused for words.

"Right."

I shook my head, yawning as I slid under the covers. "I don't get it, but there's a lot in this world that's beyond my understanding."

Edward sat down in one of the chairs, facing me. I stared up at the ceiling, counting to one hundred in my head. There was no hope of me relaxing enough to fall asleep with him staring at me. I turned on my side to study him right back.

"Does it make sense to you?"

He folded his arms over his chest out of, what I assumed, was habit. As far as I had witnessed, Edward didn't need to adjust his posture to feel comfortable. He didn't really need to sit either. It was fascinating to me to consider the fact that he still insisted on doing such human things.

_Is it because of me? _I wondered. _Would he bother with the pretense if he was all alone?_

"What are you thinking?" he whispered, captivating me with his hazel stare.

"I asked first," I insisted with a pout.

He smiled as if he found something secretly funny. "It makes sense to me. I just don't think she'll achieve what she wants from it."

"What does she want?" I pressed, yawning again as my body started to relax with exhaustion.

"It's a lesson, Bella." His voice was so soft I felt as though I was in a dream. My eyes started to close.

"What's the objective, Edward?" I mumbled as I succumbed to sleep.

"This isn't about saving innocent lives," he whispered as I drifted off. "It's about not killing the bad guy." 

**BiB~BiB~BiB~BiB~BiB~BiB**

_Someone was screaming._

_I couldn't see anything. So dark. Everything was so dark. _

_Something cold touched my ankle..._

I screamed, gasping for breath as I awoke from the worst nightmare. I couldn't remember what it was about exactly, but the feeling of helpless that enveloped me was suffocating.

"Bella?"

There he was, just like he had been that night at Emmett's house, watching over me like a guardian angel.

"Edward," I cried, throwing myself into his arms. Tears were streaming down my face. "Oh, my God,"my voice was shaky as I trembled in his arms. "That was so scary."

"Calm down," he whispered, leaning back to inspect my face. His cool hand cupped my cheek, clearing away the tears with his thumb. Fresh tears replaced those with each swipe of his thumb.

"Why are you being so sweet?" I croaked, blinking up at him in confusion.

"What do you mean?"

I felt like I was walking through a thick fog-my thoughts were disconnected, everything felt like it was moving slowly around me. "Last time we talked, we fought. You were pissed about Jake. Now…what are you doing in my room."

His gaze softened and without warning he hugged me tighter to him. I gave up trying to understand his motives. I was too exhausted for thinking.

"It's okay, sweetheart," he whispered urgently, "you're safe."

Those words were like a trigger igniting a gunshot. Suddenly I felt a surge of panic pulse through me. My heart hammered in my chest and I fought to catch my breath. I could hear growling, seeing nothing but darkness.

"Oh, God," I moaned. "Oh, God…don't hurt me…"

"Shh," Edward shushed, pulling me tighter into his embrace and rocking me gently. "Just forget it, Bella. You're safe now."

I shook my head frantically. I could hear wolves snarling all around us. Didn't he hear it?

"No!" I wailed.

"Bella, look at me," he coaxed, leaning back and angling my face up towards his. "Look at me, sweetheart."

I did as he requested, even though I was terrified that the monsters would find me.

"Forget it," he commanded in a low voice.

I got tangled up in his gaze, feeling like a warm hazel blanket was folding around me.

All at once everything was calm.

"Are you okay?" he asked.

I blinked, coming back to my senses like I had left my body for a short time without realizing it. "What was that?" My head felt like it had been split in two and then glued back together.

"You were having a nightmare."

"Oh," I said stupidly, sitting up and shoving away from him. To my surprise he didn't fight to keep his hold on me. In fact he returned to his chair without a word.

I glanced at my cell phone, noting the time. "Four a.m."

"I have an address I want to check out this morning," he explained, "would you like to join me?"

I found his request odd. _Since when is me coming along an option? Aren't we partners? _I thought.

"Sure, let me get dressed." I grabbed a fresh change of clothes on my way to the bathroom. He was standing by the door when I reemerged.

"So where are we going?" I asked, following him to the car.

"I looked up the remaining relatives in the family. There are a few who live out of state and one couple who live about twenty minutes away from here. I'm guessing this thing will go after those two next."

"Unless it went after them last night," I pointed out.

"Yeah."

The drive was quiet, the empty highway making me feel secluded with Edward in the car, like we were the only two people left on the planet.

He turned the headlights off a mile before we turned from the main highway. I assumed he sensed a threat ahead of us.

"You think this thing is already there?" I shook slightly at the thought.

_Stop being such a wus, Isabella._

"Yeah." He narrowed his eyes as he navigated the dark road.

The house was located on private property off road and tucked back in the middle of a grouping of trees.

"Of course this is where they live," I snorted derisively. "People shouldn't buy mansions out in the woods. It's just horror movie 101 that they're going to end up being mauled to death inside their house if they do." I laughed, expecting him to join in with the teasing but he was too deep in concentration to react.

"It's here."

Just as he spoke a shriek of terror erupted from inside the house.

"Oh shit," I whispered.

"Bella," he whispered, retrieving a flashlight from the glove box and easing out of the driver's side cautiously, "stay in the car."

"I can help," I hissed under my breath.

I reached for the latch of my seatbelt but froze from the icy glare he shot me through the window. He meant business. That was all the warning I needed.

He crept toward the house and my breath hitched watching him. I felt so helpless. I knew he was pretty indestructible but that didn't stop me from worrying about his safety.

"Edward," I whispered breathlessly, uncontrollably terrified that he was going to go into that house and never come back.

He was a good twenty feet from the car but he stopped and looked back as if I had yelled his name. He nodded reassuringly and started back toward the house. His self confidence did little to relieve my anxiety.

I fiddled with my finger nails, opened and closed the glove compartment and started to quietly hum the theme song to _I dream of Jeannie._ Nothing was distracting me from the silence of his departure. He was inside the house but I couldn't hear or see anything that was happening.

_Look at you,_ I thought. _Sitting out here like some damsel in distress. What in the hell happened to you? _

I rolled my eyes but stayed put. Edward was liable to bite my head off if I went into that house right now. I had proven, more than once, on this hunting trip that I was useless when the monster attacked. It was best if I just did what he told me. Stay in the car.

I scanned the drive way, realizing that even though it was so early in the morning, I could see pretty well.

_Full moon,_ I realized, glancing up at the sky. My mind instantly jumped to lunar lore which, of course, made me think of Jacob. The wolves in La Push weren't children of the moon in the traditional sense. He had taught me their legends back when we were first dating. He explained that they didn't really care one way or another about the moon since their power came from the magic of their tribe. That didn't stop me from associating the full moon with werewolves though.

Some monster ideology was just too deeply rooted to be denied.

I watched the trees now, trying to distract myself from the thought of two different guys. A shifting in the brush near the porch caught my eye. A yellow tabby cat leapt on to the stairs in the next second.

I squeaked, slouching down in my seat and hoping that it didn't notice I was in the car.

"Oh, crap," I said as the cat snuck through the doorway. Edward had left the front door open, leaving a perfect opportunity for the thing to get the upper hand.

I didn't think. I just reacted. Edward was being ambushed and I had to help however I could.

I tried to walk softly to the door but I wasn't graced with Edward's stealth or a cat-like agility. I probably sounded like a buffalo marching over shattered glass to the supernaturally charged ears in the house.

_No hope sneaking up on anyone for me._

I swallowed against the nerves that were threatening to send me running for the trees as I entered the house. The power was out and I couldn't hear anything but the sound of my own labored breathing.

"Edward?" I tried to speak but the sound was scared out of my voice. I took tentative steps through the entry way, unsure what direction I should go in.

I followed my instinct and headed to the left, having the worst flashback of the time my dad took me to a haunted house on Halloween when I was a kid.

I jumped when a hand grabbed my elbow.

"Watch out," Edward warned. I clapped my hands over my mouth when he shined the flashlight on the ground in from of me. A severed head with blonde, curly hair was inches from my feet.

"Oh, my God," I whispered.

"Bella, I told you to wait in the car." He reminded me with a stern edge in his voice.

"I know but that thing followed you…I saw…" I couldn't stop staring at the detached head on the floor. The woman's eyes were rolled back and her mouth hung open.

"Bella, look at me," he requested firmly. I did, wishing like hell I had followed his advice. "Where did it go?"

"I don't know. It followed you inside, but I was way behind it."

"Follow me," he whispered, yanking me along by the elbow.

"So, that's the wife?" I clutched on to the back of his jacket as we tiptoed through the house.

"Yeah, the husband is in pieces in the kitchen."

I shuddered. "We have to kill this thing, Edward."

"I know."

We were back at the front door when I heard something. "Edward?" I breathed.

It was the sound of feet scurry towards us. I squealed and planted my face against his back.

"Relax," he whispered mockingly. "It's just a cat."

He stepped back and I saw the same tabby from outside playing with a shoe near the front door.

"You're sure it's _just _a cat?" I asked suspiciously.

He nodded. "Yep."

"Whew, that's a—" Something sharp locked around my right ankle and pulled my legs out from under me. I screamed as my body was dragged quickly from the house.

"Edward!" I shrieked.

The animal pulled me out to the front yard. I kicked at it with my free leg, only causing it to sink its teeth deeper into my ankle.

"Ah!" I cried.

I felt something looming over me then, hearing a growl so violent that I flinched. I looked up to find Edward crouching over me, staring down the monster. His teeth were bared in warning.

I hissed as the dog-like monster bit me again. Blood was rushing from the wound. I whimpered in pain, feeling the world spin. Edward's attention shifted to me and the dog saw an opportunity to strike. It released me and lunged at Edward.

It was an uneven match. No matter how hard the dog tried it couldn't puncture into Edward's flesh. In a matter of seconds, Edward had the creature by the throat. All at once, I was terrified and intrigued—hypnotized by the site before me. He stared at the monster with such intense rage like I had never seen on his face before. He brought the creature's neck to his lips and bit through its throat, ripping the head clean from the body in one fluid motion.

"Edward?" I gasped once it was over.

He was still snarling from the fight, blood dripping from his chin. In the moonlight he looked less human, almost like his skin was lit with an ethereal glow. His eyes were unfocused with rage and he crouched like a panther waiting to strike. The dog's head was still clutched in his right hand while the body lay limp against his feet.

His eyes snapped in my direction at the sound of my voice.

I didn't wait for him to determine if I was a threat, launching myself at him with the desperation to know that he was okay.

"Edward." I slammed against his solid body and wrapping my arms around his waist. I could feel something wet against my cheek.

"Bella," he whispered. I heard a loud thump and then sighed as his arms secured around me. "Oh, God…your leg. let me look…"

He pushed me away so that he could inspect me. I shook my head frantically, grasping for his hold on me, needing to feel the safety of his embrace more than I needed medical attention.

"I'm okay. Please, just hold me." I was desperate, border-line hysterical as tears trekked down my face.

He did as I requested, lifting me in his arms slightly, to take the pressure off of my injured ankle.

"I'm so sorry, Bella." He clutched me tighter to him. "I should of have heard it sooner…I'd kill it again if I could."

"It's okay. It's okay," I chanted, rubbing my hands against his back to soothe his worry.

"You're safe," he whispered, nuzzling his nose against my neck and inhaling deeply.

We stayed frozen like that until the sun came up. I wasn't sure which of us needed it more but neither of us was willing to let go first.

Something warm and soft nudged against my ankle followed by soft purring.

"I think you made a friend."

"Aw." I knelt down and scooped up the yellow and tan colored tabby. "Do you think he belonged to the family?" I asked, not seeing a collar around his neck.

"Yeah, and it's a she," he pointed out.

"How can you tell?" I held the cat up and inappropriately checking out its crotch.

"I can hear her." He reached out to pet her and she hissed. He recoiled, eyeing me speculatively as I nuzzled the kitty.

"I think I like her," I grinned as he scowled.

"Really?" he whined, taking a step back when she hissed at him again.

"Yes, and I think I'll call her Joan Jett," I proclaimed, scratching behind her ear.

"Joan Jett?"

"Yeah, you guys name stuff after your favorite singers. Why can't I?"

He snorted, pulling out his phone to alert the authorities.

"I guess you could call what she does singing," he teased. 

**BiB~BiB~BiB~BiB~BiB~BiB**

"I still don't get it," I told him. We were driving down the 90, back into Washington. An easy silence had fallen between us since we left town. My ankle was stitched up and propped up with the weapon duffel from the trunk. Joan Jett slept peacefully on my lap as if she had always belonged there.

"One day you will," he said in a smooth, mystical like tone like the way Madame Tami loved to use on her customers.

I snorted in response.

"I don't know about you, but I'm looking forward to getting back. Just easing into a warm bubble bath and relaxing for a few days. No road. No monsters…no vomit."

He laughed. "Such a low maintenance girl, you are," he teased.

"Pretty much any girl is cool with no vomit, Edward."

"Noted."

"What are you plans for when we get back to Forks?"

"Dunno. Probably watch Emmett work on the Impala."

"You mean your dad?" I supplied, wildly curious about that whole situation, but not wanting to push him to talk about it if he wasn't ready.

He opened his mouth to respond when a Cher song started playing throughout the car.

"Dark lady?" I asked, giving him a look.

He smirked. "Tami's ringtone," he informed me like it was the most logical choice.

I laughed as he clicked on his Bluetooth to answer the call.

"Yah," he said.

I watched the world fly by the window without a care, scratching my new kitty behind her ear. It was an odd sense of comfort that I wanted to challenge but couldn't help but accept. I felt at ease in that moment with Edward. I knew that big bad things were waiting just outside the car. Hell, for all intents and purposes, Edward was a big bad thing and he was driving the car. But I didn't care. We'd completed our mission and now we were heading home.

I felt accomplished for the first time in a very long time.

"Really?" The tone of his voice alerted me that I wasn't going to like what Tami was telling him.

He huffed. "Okay, sure. Fine. Whatever. Where are we going and what are we looking for?"

I waited for him to receive our instructions, almost finding the tick in his cheek adorable. I was really starting to like Madame Tami. She could get under Edward's skin faster than I could. That tickled me a bit.

"Okay. We'll report in when we get there." He hung up, rolling his eyes to the roof of the car before looking over at me.

"So…I take it no bubble bath?" I joked.

"No," he said, flipping a 'U' in the middle of the street without warning, or consideration for speed limits.

"Geez, Edward," I said, clutching my chest as my heart hammered in my ribcage. Joan was jostled awake and hissed at him for the interruption. "Some of us aren't as indestructible as you."

"You're wearing your seatbelt," he defended, smirking and then scowling at the angered kitty. "I'd be okay with you flopping to the floorboard," he added dryly.

"Don't be a dick." I slapped his shoulder. "Where are we going?"

"You'll see."

"What are we looking for?"

"I'll tell you when we get there. We've got a long drive ahead of us."

"Will there be a Target in this mysterious location?" I asked.

He shot me a look like I'd lost my damn mind. "Probably. Why?"

I sighed. _Men. _"Edward, I've been on the road for a solid week. I sincerely doubt that I'll want to wash anything I'm going to wear in the motel that you'll be selecting for us to stay in. And I'm not going to explain female hygiene to you."

He gave me a double take and grimaced. "Seriously?" he whined.

"Yes, unfortunately for you, I'm _not_ Jazz." 

**BiB~BiB~BiB~BiB~BiB~BiB**

**A/N: Thanks for reading!**

**Angiak: **_"According to Eskimo lore, an Angiak is a child of the living dead. Eskimo often had to give up their new-born children during harsh times and would do so by abandoning them in the snow. Unless the Eskimo tribe moved to a new land, it was believed that the ghosts of these babies would come back ot haunt them. An Angiak is to gain strength upon each visit to the tribe, until it is powerful enough to seek revenge on the elders." (Super-wiki)_


	3. Chapter 3: September 5th, 2010

**A/N: Thanks for reading!**

**Supernatural and Twilight are not my property. Just having some fun with this.**

**Big thanks to the lovely detroitangel for you awesome beta work. And to Kharizzmatik for your never-ending words of support. Big hugs to you both.**

**This fic is rated M for a reason. Please read responsibly. **

**BiB~BiB~BiB~BiB~BiB~BiB**

"_Though my eyes could see I still was a blind man_

_Though my mind could think I still was a mad man_

_I hear the voices when I'm dreaming."_

**(_Carry On My Wayward Son,_ Kansas)**

**BiB~BiB~BiB~BiB~BiB~BiB**

**Case File #60: Renee Swan**

_A young girl bounced a rubber ball against the cracking wood steps on the front porch of the Swan residence. The girl, Isabella Swan, glanced up as a black sedan parked at the end of the driveway._

"_Mom, visitors!"_

_A matter of seconds passed before the bright face of Isabella's mother, Renee, appeared in the doorway. She wiped her hands on her apron, clearing the remnants of pie crust from her fingers. _

"_Bella, why don't you go upstairs and change for dinner." _

_Isabella could hear the urgency in her mother's voice. She was immediately cautious of the strangers walking towards the house and lingered on the step with a desire to help ward off evil. The man and woman seemed harmless enough, business people of some sort, but Isabella could sense something dark within them._

"_Now, Bella."_

_She followed her mother's request, wishing that her father were home. Isabella stomped up the stairs, but crouched behind a bookshelf on the second floor landing. It was her favorite place to hide when spying on her parents. She didn't do it often, but there were times that Isabella wanted to hear the secrets her parents were keeping from her._

"_What are you doing here?" Renee asked, still on the front porch. _

_Isabella had to strain to hear the strangers' reply. _

"_I warned you before that I would return if you did not do as I asked." Isabella could tell that the man was speaking even though his voice was breathy and higher in pitch than her father's._

"_I did as you requested. I moved here…the wolves…there's been no child…" Renee defended._

"_There is a child," a woman's voice interrupted, "she's hiding upstairs right this minute."_

"_They won't want her. They only want the boys. They wrote me off years before I left. The psychic said I'd never…"_

"_We will overlook this transgression in exchange for what they want," the man interjected in a voice devoid of emotion. _

"_You can't have her," Renee declared without waiting for the terms of his proposal._

_The woman cut off Renee's defensive tirade. "We don't want her."_

_Their voices were silent then. Isabella leaned around the bookcase, poking her head out far enough to see her mother's shadow cast over the threshold of the front door. She felt sick to her stomach. It was hard to breathe. The air around her was suddenly too heavy for her lungs—suffocating. _

"_Mom." She tried to call but no sound came out. _

"_What makes you think I'll tell you anything about those boys?" Renee shouted. _

_Isabella watched in horror as the strangers' shadows engulfed her mother's._

"_You have three seconds and then I shall finish the job Charles Swan prevented me from completing ten years ago."_

_The threat shocked Isabella from her hiding place. She scrambled to her feet, rushing down the stairs without thought of what she was heading into._

"_Mommy!" she screamed._

_She was too late. The shadows cleared and the black sedan sped off as Isabella Swan fell to her knees on the front porch._

_The image of her mother's slit throat forever imprinted on her mind._

**BiB~BiB~BiB~BiB~BiB~BiB**

**September 5th, 2010**

**Lesson #13: **Luck is an illusion

**Charlie PoV (Forks Washington)**

I slammed my hand down on the clock a second before the alarm went off. That was something that used to bug the crap out of Renee—bless her soul. She used to laugh out loud when I set the alarm before going to bed at night because she knew I'd wake up exactly two minutes before it would go off.

And I still did.

I got dressed, making sure to put my rubber boots on after I was on the front porch. Not that anyone in the house would even notice the squeak of them at this hour. Emmett would be snoring away, wrapped around Blondie so tight that she probably wouldn't be able to hear anything else. Bells would be tossing and turning in her bed, trapped in nightmares that she wouldn't remember when she woke up. Edward would hear it, sure, but he'd be too busy watching my daughter to care about what I was doing.

Then there was Jasper. That boy was out roaming the forest himself at this hour, no doubt. I wasn't worried about waking him one way or the other.

I retrieved my tackle box and fishing pole from the garage, giving Carlisle a sympathetic glance. Emmett had been going to town on repairs the last two months. The old Impala lay in pieces, unapologetically tossed about the converted barn-garage. It twisted my gut to see it—to think that my old friend was literally torn apart. Emmett insisted that there was no getting around it, though. He said the only way to really put Carlisle back together was to completely destroy him.

I wondered if the kid knew how prophetic he sounded these days.

"Charlie?"

I jumped when I caught sight of Edward to my left. He moved like the wind these days.

"Geez, you scared me," I blustered, pushing past him to load up the pickup.

"You're going fishing."

From anyone else that would have been a question, but coming from Edward Cullen it was just a statement. He had heard my boots squeak down the porch steps. He could probably smell the live bait in the cooler in the truck bed. And, of course, he could read my thoughts.

I stared at the kid, stupidly waiting for him to say something else. Edward had always been a tough one to talk to. Now, I was on my toes about keeping my thoughts clear whenever I knew he was listening. Sometimes I got so damn focused on not thinking around him that I didn't have anything to say out loud.

"I wish I could control it," he frowned, "but you know you don't have to monitor your thoughts around me, Charlie."

I snorted instead of verbalizing my opinion on that statement. He could hear what I was thinking. He knew how violated that lack of privacy made me feel.

"Did you have a reason for sneaking up on me Gomez?"

Edward laughed. "Gomez? That's new. I thought you would stick with Herman Munster."

"What can I say, kid? I like to surf channels." We both laughed. "So, what brings you down to see me off at two a.m.?"

He was quiet for too damn long. I fiddled with my keys and checked to make sure everything was secured down in the truck bed three times before I turned to look at him. The moon was full in the cloudless sky, casting everything in a silvery glow. Edward looked even less human in the moonlight than he did in the sunlight lately. His skin seemed to be getting paler and his eyes were starting to glow.

"She's getting worse." The agony in his voice rattled the bones in my chest.

"What?" I challenged, denying that what I thought he was talking about was what he was talking about.

He nodded, reading my damn mind.

"No. You said…you _promised_… You all said she wouldn't remember any of it. That witch said she could make it last…"

"It's not that." He threw his hands up to stop me from marching back into the house. "She doesn't remember it. But that doesn't mean she's not _trying _to remember it. It's not something she can control. Her brain just wants to figure it out too much."

"Ah, shit."

I knew exactly what he meant. The weeks, days, even the hours since that night in La Push filled my memory. Edward cringed as he relived the moments through my thoughts.

"Just watch her, please?" My voice cracked with the same emotion that had filled his.

He offered me a respectful nod and sped back into the house in the blink of an eye.

"Never gonna get used to that," I mumbled to myself, climbing into the truck.

It was a quiet drive down to my favorite fishing spot near the river. With Edward a safe distance away, I let my thoughts wander back to what he was worried about.

Back to that night, two months ago.

**BiB~BiB~BiB~BiB~BiB~BiB**

**July 5th, 2010 (Forks)**

"_What the hell happened to you boys?" I asked as Jazz fell out of the front seat of the Impala. _

_He groaned when I tried to help him to his feet. "Had a lil run-in with some immortals."_

"_Fuck me," Emmett came running out of the house to help, "you mean he drove all the way to wherever you were? Where were you by the way?"_

"_Out of the country, if I remember the international call dispatch correctly." I helped Jazz to porch and turned back to the car to help Edward._

_I jumped when I found Edward standing next to me. I hadn't heard him move—it hadn't even been a second since I dropped his brother off on the porch. _

How did he get over here so fast? _I wondered._

"_Something happened to me." He said it like he was replying to a question. I shot Em a look and he ushered the boys inside. _

_I stood there for a minute, catching my breath before I took a seat behind the wheel of the Impala. _

"_Talk to me." I was ready to spit fire at the dashboard. Carlisle liked to play God with his game of fate, but I was fed up with patching up his kids for the sake of his secrets. _

"_It happened." The words filtered through the speakers as if I had popped in a cassette tape. The voice was strained and weak, but it clearly belonged to Carlisle Cullen._

"_You wanna clue me in on what 'it' is?" _

"_Take him to Tami. She knows and she'll be able to help him," he coughed as if he still had lungs and they were too tired to hold enough air for more words, "and Bella. He'll need to be near Bella."_

_I glared at the radio dial. "The hell he will. You tell me for almost twenty years that you're damn near ready to kill your son because you don't know what the shit he'll become and now you expect me to unleash him on my daughter?" _

"_They aren't our kids, Charlie." _

"_You can save the fate-is-what-controls-all-of-us-Bible-thumping-bullshit for the gals in your sewing circle, Blondie."_

_The car laughed. "You know what I'm talking about. You're the one who told me about Renee's journal. None of these kids belong to us."_

_I opened the glove compartment to distract myself from the truth. There was shit I involved myself with and then there was deep shit that I told Carlisle I only wanted on a need to know basis. This was the deep shit kinda stuff—the things Renee would try to tell me and I'd just fluff off. In the glove box I found a container full of fake IDs, a handful of ignored parking tickets and a folded up piece of paper that looked like it had survived a few decades of abuse. I pulled it out, smiling as I opened it._

_It was a picture of a black car, a stick person with blonde hair behind the wheel. Under it the word "Daddy" was scribbled with a backwards 'y'. _

"_The hell they ain't." _

"_Charlie, do as I ask!" The engine revved as I climbed out of the car and headed into the house._

_I got what Carlisle was alluding to—planned on doing exactly what the cocky son of a bitch asked me to do, in fact. For tonight I just wanted to make sure the boys were okay. Bells was safe in La Push for the time being. The Pack had given me their word that they wouldn't let her wander off. _

_I'd deal with the details in the morning._

_Rosalie was standing behind the couch in the living room with a blanket wrapped around her shoulders. She glanced at me as I entered the room. _

"_How is he?"_

_She shrugged. "He passed out as soon as the redhead laid him down."_

_Edward sat on the arm of couch, staring down at his brother. The kid looked as white as a ghost. I forwent introductions since I figured Rose had heard enough about the Cullen boys over the past couple of weeks to know who these two were. My main concern was figuring out what in the hell happened in South America._

"_You okay, Edward?"_

_He nodded but didn't look at me. I wondered about what kind of hell he must have been through over the past couple of weeks._

"_They tortured me." His voice was a hollowed whisper that made my heart sink into my stomach. For some damn reason I felt the urge to jump in the pickup and haul ass to get Bells and bring her here._

_Edward's eyes darted in my direction. _

"_What?"_

"_Where is she?"_

_I looked around, noticing that Rose had walked into the kitchen to talk to Emmett. "She's next to the fridge, why?"_

"_Bella." Her name hung in the air for a moment—I wasn't sure if he spoke it or I had imagined it. Nobody but Carlisle had called her that since the day Renee died. I was reminded of a moment twenty years ago when Edward was just a toddler, pressing his hand to my pregnant wife's stomach. _

"_You wanna know where Bells is?" _

_He nodded, slowly. _

Tough titties,_ I thought. I was right to follow my instinct, at least for tonight. Isabella would be safer in La Push._

_Edward sneered with disgust. "She's with _them_?" _

_I looked over my shoulder and then shot my eyes around the room. _

"_With who?" _

"_The wolves. You just said she's in La Push." _

_My blood ran cold when I realized what he was getting at. "You heard that?"_

_He nodded, giving me a questioning look._

_I just shook it off. I was pretty damn sure what had happened now._

"_Tell me," he begged. He heard my thoughts as if I had spoken them out loud._

"_I have…a…uh…book you might find interesting. I'll get it for you in the morning."_

_He went back to staring down at Jazz like he was the only thing that made sense in the world anymore._

"_Why don't we get you set up in a room upstairs?" _

"_I'm not tired." _

_The kid looked like he'd been beaten from one end of Forks to the other. His hair stood on end in every direction and there were dark circles under his eyes. But I believed he wouldn't go to sleep. _

Eleazar said they never sleep.

"_What am I?" He fired the question at me like a gunshot. I opened my mouth to explain and the damn phone rang. _

"_Alice!" Jazz screamed, popping straight up on the couch like someone had kicked him in the ass. "Where the fuck are we?"_

"_Go back to sleep, son."_

_He eyed me for a minute before it registered in his brain who I was. He flopped back down without another word._

"_Chuck, it's for you." Emmett tossed the phone to me, offering a plate full of sandwiches to Edward._

Kid won't be hungry any time soon.

_Edward turned at the sound of my thoughts, but just waved Em's offering away. _

"_This is Charlie." I held the phone to my ear, nearly dropping it the second I heard her voice._

"_Daddy?" _

"_Bells?" _

_I looked at the clock__. Three a.m__. _What in the hell is she calling for at this time of night.

"_I need you to come to La Push. Right now. Don't tell anyone where you're going. Just get here. Now."_

"_Isabella? What's going on?"_

"_Just get here. And come alone. They won't be happy if you bring anyone with you."_

_She hung up and I stared at the receiver in shock. _

"_I'm coming with you." Edward was standing next to me before I could hit the end call button on the phone._

"_They said I need to go alone. And you ain't in any state to deal with anything right now, kid."_

_He tried to insist and I waved him off. "I mean it, Edward. You going down there will put Isabella at risk. You want that?"_

_He warred with my logic and his desires, but soon gave in and returned to the couch. _

"_Where are you going?" Emmett asked as I grabbed the keys to the pickup._

"_Push."_

**BiB~BiB~BiB~BiB~BiB~BiB**

**September 5th, 2010**

I tapped my fingers against the steering wheel as the classic rumble of Johnny Cash's voice rolled through the cab of the pickup truck. Renee used to call my taste in music 'typically Charlie'. I would play _A Boy Named Sue_ on repeat on road trips just to see her roll her eyes at me.

I didn't listen to a single note of his music for years after she passed.

I found myself listening to him more and more in recent years. The sound of his yesteryear-rebellious-soul-wrenching melodies comforted me somehow.

"When I hear that whistling blowing, I hang my head and cry."

I frowned as I recalled the last time I was in this truck listening to this song.

**BiB~BiB~BiB~BiB~BiB~BiB**

**July 5th, 2010**

"_Are you shitting me?" _

_Jasper stood in the bed of the Chevy glaring down at me like he had every right to do so. I noticed something moving around in the back just after I pulled out of Forks. I was pissed to find yet another Cullen trying to help._

"_You shouldn't go alone. None of us should be alone right now."_

"_You get your ass out of my truck!" I shouted, reaching out to swat his leg._

_He danced out of my reach. "I can help."_

"_I already told your brother to stay back because it's not safe. Is that the one damn trait you Cullens share? Stubborn ass hardheadedness?"_

"_First of all…that's kinda two traits and secondly we're not blood related."_

"_On second thought, just stand real still while I get my pistol." I leaned into the cab and searched for the holster tucked under the seat._

"_Charlie you know I'm right. This isn't normal. You know it's a trap."_

"_Jasper when you have a child and you're worried about keeping her safe, you can preach all you want to me about what's right and wrong. And on that damn day I'm still gonna ignore you." I aimed the pistol, albeit it was empty, at his chest and glared._

"_Shoot me." He didn't flinch—didn't even blink as he dared me. _

_I didn't have the stomach to square off with him. I lowered the gun with a sigh. "What happened down there kid?"_

_He shrugged. I recognized the misdirection technique, since I'd been employing it myself for years. _

"_Get in."_

_I turned on the radio to break the silence in the cab as we started back on the road. _

"_Johnny Cash?" Jasper's eyebrows touched as he looked at me._

"_If you're about to say something disrespectful about the man in black, I'm just gonna remind you about that gun I have." _

_He laughed nervously, waving his hands in surrender. "Nah, not gonna disrespect. Just…didn't realize this archaic vehicle had a stereo. Course the 8-track is a nice touch."_

_I leaned over and smacked him on the back of the head before turning off the main highway toward the reservation._

"_Hey," he bitched, "what was that for?"_

"_Don't talk shit about my truck either." I glared at him. _

"_You got a list or something?" He rubbed the back of his head with a grimace and I quickly reminded myself that he's been through hell and back in the last few days. _

_I shook my head, turning my eyes back to the moonlit, costal road. "Nope. That's more your dad's thing."_

"_Lot of good it did him."_

_I let that remark disappear into the graveyard of shit I didn't want to talk about. Renee used to call it selective hearing. It was more like selective awareness. I didn't want to go down the road of Carlisle-made-the-bed-he's-sleeping-in-now. This dirt road down to Jacob Black's house was hard enough to navigate._

"_Don't worry, Em will get the Impala back up and running and then…" my voice dropped off as I realized I didn't have an "and then" to supply. _

"_And then we'll still be in this same situation. Only, maybe, I'll finally get to confront the bastard."_

_That offhand statement was buried right next to the other. I shut my mouth and hummed along to _Folsom Prison Blues.

"_You know Dad used to tell me that Country music was a crime against humanity."_

_I snorted in agreement. "It is."_

"_Then how can you listen to this?"_

"_Your father missed a vital lesson with you boys. Cash isn't Country." I wagged my finger toward the tape deck. "He's a little bit of everything. Rock…Gospel…"_

"_They play his music on Howlin' Country 98.2 FM," he contradicted._

"_Jasper?"_

"_Yeah?"_

"_Shut up."_

_He huffed. The truck bounced as we started hitting the off-road portion of the tour._

"_When was the last time you replaced the shocks in this heap?"_

_I shot him a look and he ducked in anticipation of me hitting him again._

"_The pickup has survived a lot."_

"_Yeah, both world wars," he mumbled under his breath._

"_Appreciate your elders, son," I warned, "experience goes a long way in this world."_

"_I've met my fair share of elders lately, thanks." He messed with the sleeve of his jacket, scratching at his wrist._

"_You're all patched up, right?" I hadn't even thought to ask before we jumped into the truck. My baby girl said she needed me and everything else was shifted down on my priorities list. _

_He nodded. "Don't worry 'bout me, Charlie."_

Yeah, like that will ever happen. _I'd been worrying about Carlisle Cullen's kids since before I met them. _

"_And here we are." I parked at the end of what one would call the driveway. _

_Jazz whistled, taking in the sight of the three story colonial house._

"_Casinos have been good to them."_

_I laughed. "Casinos, stock market, I wouldn't be surprised to find that Billy runs drugs through Forks either. The Quileute aren't hurting for much, that's for sure."_

"_Well, that's one point for dog-boy." _

_We slid out of the truck and headed to the front door. "One point for what?"_

"_For Iz."_

"_Against who?"_

_Jazz shook his head, laughing._

"_My daughter isn't some damn prize steak." I reached for the doorbell but froze when I saw the blood smeared across the doorknob. _

"_What the hell?" Jazz pulled a gun from his jacket pocket and pulled out the knife concealed in my boot._

"_What did Iz say on the phone?" He kept his voice low, scanning the area behind us as I tested the door._

"_She said to come alone. That there was something important they wanted to tell me."_

"_Why?"_

_I pressed against the door and it popped open silently. My mouth went dry with anticipation. It had been years since I had been on a hunt. My old heart thumped recklessly in my chest. _

"_Didn't ask." I signaled for him to follow me inside._

_We crept in slowly. Nothing looked out of place as I took measured steps toward the family room. The lights were on. I could hear a TV on. _

"_You see anymore blood?" _

_Jasper stepped next to me, shaking his head in response. "Nope. But I can tell you we just walked into a trap."_

**BiB~BiB~BiB~BiB~BiB~BiB**

**September 5th, 2010**

There's a trick to stream fishing that my granddaddy taught me. You gotta be patient. Don't drop your line in the middle of the water with the hope that the fish will just take the bait. You have to sneak up on them. Drag your line close to the rocks, near the shadows under the water. You line your bait up in the darkness and wait.

It worked every time.

It was an effective means of capture that worked on more than just fish over my lifetime.

The first time I went hunting with Carlisle Cullen I saw just how valuable this method was. Carlisle had some damn fool idea that we could take down a wraith without much more than a sneeze and a prayer. If I hadn't been hiding in the shadows with that silver blade that idiot would have ended up a blonde corpse that night.

I laughed to myself as I baited my hook.

"You cocky little shit." Years of moments just like that ran amuck in my head. Not just of Carlisle but those two boys who were desperately trying to fight their way out of the shadows now.

I planted my feet on the rocks at the edge of the river and cast my line in.

And I waited.

The cool morning air mixed with the sounds of crickets chirping and frogs croaking helped me clear my head. It was amazing how alive the forest was when people were asleep. I relished the absence of humanity in the early morning hours like this. Out here there weren't any expectations or complications.

It was just me and the river.

I watched the water flowing by, the ripples caused by jumping fish alerting me that I wouldn't be going home empty handed.

I sensed eyes on me, but kept my focus on my line in the water.

"Aha." I caught sight of silvery scales floating toward my hook. "Gotcha."

The line tugged my pole forward and I wrestled to reel the sucker in. The fish wiggled on the line, splashing water as it tail slapped against the surface of the river.

"Ah, you're barely big enough to fillet." I knelt down to hold him up.

"Don't tell me you're into catching and releasing now too?" Jasper stepped around the tree behind me, kneeling down to inspect my catch.

"Doesn't matter if I am. This lil guy's a goner. He swallowed the hook."

He took the fish from me without saying a word, whipping out a pocket knife and slicing into its stomach. There wasn't any remorse in his movements. Sure it was just a fish, but I could tell he had used that knife on plenty of other creatures with the same discriminate compassion.

"Something on your mind, son?" I waited as he wiped the fish guts from his knife using his pants leg.

"Too much."

He handed the freed hook to me and tossed the dead fish back into the river.

"You know there are starving kids in Africa." Renee used to say shit like that whenever I wasted food on my plate. I'd offer for her to airmail my leftovers to those kids if she thought it would help.

"Yeah. And my brother hasn't eaten a damn thing since June." His voice was like ice.

I bit my tongue and baited my hook for another round.

"When are we gonna look for him?"

I stood, casting my line right back to the same rocks where I'd caught the lil' guy.

"What use is there finding him, Jasper? It's only gonna end in more bloodshed."

He reached out, letting the water run over his fingertips.

"They wanted him dead for a reason. I need to know what that is. Edward needs it."

I sighed, reeling in my line to pull my bait further upstream.

"I'm serious, Charlie. I've waited this long for you to grow a pair and help me figure this out, but..."

"Hey!" I threw the fishing pole down, letting the river carry it away as I hauled Jasper to his feet with a firm grip on his jacket. "Unless you want to feel my boot so far up your ass that it's coming out of your throat you need to watch your damn mouth, boy."

He stared me down with hollow eyes. "I gotta do something. _Please._ Help me do something."

_God damn you, Carlisle Cullen, for ever introducing me to your boys. _

**BiB~BiB~BiB~BiB~BiB~BiB**

**July 5th, 2010**

"_You hear that?" Jazz whispered, pointing to a room at the end of the second floor landing. _

_I could hear a faint moaning—whimpers of pain and fear._

"_You got bullets in that thing?" I nodded to revolver in his hand. _

"_Nah, left them at home. I was hoping I could just chuck it at whatever we find in there."_

_I glared at his teasing. _

"_Ask a stupid question, get a stupid answer." He shrugged._

_I couldn't argue with that. _

"_Bells?" I tried to keep my voice low as we inched our way to the door._

"_You feel that?"_

"_What?"_

"_Dad! Help!" Isabella started screaming._

"_Bella?" I charged the door, driven by the need to protect my little girl. _

"_Charlie, wait!" _

_I ran into an empty room. No Bells. No furniture. No monsters. _

_I turned back toward the hallway. The door across the hall opened. _

_It happened so fast—the blink of an eye._

_I saw two women in the room. One had flaming red hair and the other was covered in tattoos. The redhead had Bella pinned down on the bed while the other one stood at the door. _

_Jazz looked from me to the scene of two the women. _

_I shouted, running toward the door. It slammed shut before I could reach it, locking instantly from the outside._

"_No!"_

_I could hear screaming, doors slamming. Isabella was crying. Jasper was shouting. _

_I threw my body against the door over and over. It didn't budge. I had to get out. Frantically I tried to open the window on the far side of the room. I knew I was on the second floor, God knew how many feet the fall would be, but I needed to do something. Just like the door, the window was shut tight. I started kicking at it, fueled by adrenaline. The glass was thick but my determination was stronger. It shattered and I hissed as my ankle snared on a shard jutting out from the sill. _

"_Son of bitch." _

_I busted out the remaining glass to clear a hole big enough for me to jump through. I popped my head out far enough to gauge the distance for my fall. _

_I about shit myself at the thought of falling all the way to the ground. It had to be a good twenty feet or more._

What's the sense in breaking my neck trying to help?

_Isabella screamed. _

_The sound propelled me through the window without a second thought. Luckily, I remembered the old tuck and roll technique. I landed flat on my ass instead of my head._

_I rolled to my knees, groaning as my sciatica flared in my hip. _

"_Damn it! I'm getting to old for this shit." _

_I made my way, with the speed of a snail on crutches, back to the front door. I missed my step as I turned the corner. My lack of agility saved my life. A bullet whizzed by my ear as I let gravity take the lead._

"_Whoa!" I ducked, feeling my knee pop when I tried to stabilize my footing._

"_Get the hell off our land!" _

_Another round fired off and I kissed dirt. "It's me! Billy, it's me, Charlie!"_

_The silence of bullets didn't give me that "all's clear" feeling that I was hoping for. I peeked up to see Billy Black aiming his rifle square between my eyes._

"_You have five minutes."_

_I balled my hands into fists, taking a step toward the rifle-wielding chief. "I want my kids." _

"_Then you shouldn't have brought them here." He cocked the gun._

"_You making deals with demons now, Billy?" A few pieces fell into place when he didn't bat an eye at my question. Carlisle had warned me not to trust the wolves back in Phoenix. I thought he was just being his paranoid self. Now I could see he must have figured something out. _

"_Times up."_

**BiB~BiB~BiB~BiB~BiB~BiB**

**September 5th, 2010**

"Morning, Dad." Bells was standing at the stove when I walked through the back door. The kitchen was filled with the smell of breakfast—eggs, pancakes and coffee.

"You're an angel." I kissed her cheek and she shrugged. Her inability to take a compliment hadn't changed in the past two months. She acted just as tough as she always had. I found comfort in that.

Edward sat at the kitchen table, strumming his fingers against it like he was waiting for a detective to show up and interrogate him.

His left eyebrow raised in question.

"Still working on that staying out of my head bit, huh?"

He looked abashed as Bells walked a plate to the table.

"It's not like he can help it, Dad." She playfully smacked my arm. "Eat up."

"Thanks, baby girl." I took my seat and watched as she went back to work cooking like she didn't have a care in the world.

_Still getting worse?_ I asked silently, popping a piece of bacon in my mouth.

Edward nodded, not concerned to hide his movements from Isabella.

"Tami called an hour ago. She's stopping by at lunch."

"Oh, really?" That was an interesting development. Tami hadn't stepped foot outside her backwoods abode in the past twenty years.

"Yeah, it's that bad." He went back to drumming his fingers against the table.

"What's getting bad?" Bells asked, filling up my cup with fresh coffee.

"Nothing, Bella," he lied. He didn't blink as he watched her—his mood so intense that I felt uncomfortable being in his line of sight.

She smiled shyly, her cheeks growing pink as she rushed back to the stove.

"Knock that shit off right now." I stabbed my fork into the short stack on my plate and waved my butter knife at him in warning. I further emphasized my point by imagining the various forms of vampire torture that Eleazar once described to Carlisle.

He smirked. "Been there. Done that." He looked past me and his face went all goofy.

I looked back to find Bells bent over, pulling muffins from the oven.

"I mean it, kid. You're gonna be sleeping in the barn."

"I don't sleep." He crossed his arms in defiance.

"What are you two talking about?" Bells asked, dropping a basket of muffins on to the table.

We silently challenged each other to explain it to her. She glanced between the two of us before waving a spatula in my face.

"Be nice."

I started to defend myself but Emmett bounded into the room before I could. "Oh, holy General Motors! Eddie's Izzard, you are officially my favorite person in the morning!" He wrapped his arms around her and lifted her off the floor in a big bear hug.

Edward growled quietly as Bells fought her way out of Emmett's embrace.

"Thanks, babe." He kissed her cheek and started piling food on a platter.

"I thought _I _was your favorite person first thing in the morning." Rosalie followed Em to the stove. She offered Bells a polite sneer before dismissing her completely.

"You _are_ in bed. That's for damn sure." Em smacked Rose's ass when she reached for some bacon. She giggled and elbowed him.

I turned back to my food after that. "I'm living on the set of one of Jazz's damn soap operas."

"Try hearing their thoughts," Edward mumbled mournfully. "Emmett only ever has two things on his mind. Food and sex. And sometimes he puts those together."

I dropped the bite of pancake back on to my plate without tasting any of it.

"Well there goes my appetite."

"You gonna eat that, Charlie?" Em asked, taking the seat next to me.

"Knock yourself out." I slid my plate over to him and headed upstairs.

It was odd to try to think of this place as home. Truth be told, no house had felt like home since I buried Renee—bless her soul. Emmett had given us the 'Mi casa, Su casa' promise, but I felt like I was still on the road, hunting and sleeping in a hotel room until I moved to the next town.

I stripped down once I was alone. My old bones protested as I tugged my shirt over my head.

"Not as young as I used to be." I rolled my shoulder, massaging the stiffness away.

I sat on the bed, staring at the picture of Renee that I had propped up on the nightstand. I kissed my fingers, pressing them to her lips.

"I miss you, Sweetheart."

There were so many times, in such simple ways, that I found myself wishing she was still here. Course, there were major moments that I could have used her guidance in the past couple of weeks.

**BiB~BiB~BiB~BiB~BiB~BiB**

**July 5th, 2010**

_The gun went off and I flinched. I planted myself, unwaivering, and made a face that only my wife would have loved—waiting to die. It wasn't the first time I'd braced myself for death. Hell, I'd even spent a few rounds with defibrillators. I can honestly say that this was the one time I expected it to stick, though. I figured I'd dicked up enough in the last eighteen years and Satan finally called my number at the deli counter of Hell._

_I didn't expect the twenty year old dumbshit to jump in front of me. _

_Edward shoved me to the ground, taking the bullet in his arm with little more than a grunt in pain. _

"_What the hell?" _

"_Get to the truck, Charlie," he pleaded. _

_He was wrestling the rifle out of Billy's hands before I could get to my feet. I saw the front door open and Jazz came running out, carrying an unconscious Isabella in his arms._

"_What happened?" _

"_No time. Get the truck started!"_

_I pulled the keys out of my pocket and sprinted for the truck. My hands were shaking as I unlocked the doors._

"_Help me get her in the cab." Jazz stood off to the side when he reached the passenger door. _

_I threw the door open, glancing up in time to see the claws sink into Jazz's chest. _

_I was such a useless, blind jackass. _

_I hadn't checked the truck. Hadn't even thought to look around to make sure the coast was clear. A ten foot half man-half wolf towered over us from the bed of the truck. _

"_Holy shit!"_

_Jazz screamed as the beast pulled him off his feet, forcing him to drop Isabella. I tried to help brace her fall but the wolf back handed me, sending me five feet from the truck. I saw stars for a few minutes, shaking my head to get back in the game._

_Jazz joined Isabella, and me, on the ground as a blur fought against the giant wolf. _

_I crawled back to Bells, shielding her as Edward and the wolf tumbled out of the truck and into the forest. I felt like a pussy just lying there and not trying to help. Jazz was bleeding, looked like he had a bite on his neck. Isabella had bruises all over her arms and blood was running down her forehead. I could hear snarling and thrashing, but I didn't do a damn thing to help him. _

_There was a loud thud and a howl so loud I had to cover my ears. That kicked up a nest of howling all around us in the dark._

"_Time to get out of here, Charlie," Edward said, pulling me to my feet. He placed Bells gently into the front seat and secured her seatbelt. _

_I stood there gawking at him like an empty headed idiot._

"_Get in. You're driving." He tossed me the keys and lifted Jasper into the bed of the truck. He crouched protectively over his brother as I climbed in behind the wheel._

"_Drive fast. I don't think they'll leave their land. Just get us to the border before they decide to break the treaty."_

_He didn't have to tell me twice. _

**BiB~BiB~BiB~BiB~BiB~BiB**

**September 5th, 2010**

"She's looking a lot worse than you described," Tami said, inspecting an unconscious Isabella. "Lot worse than she was when you two were at my house the other day."

"She's good at hiding it when she's awake." Edward sat next to my daughter, holding her hand like some damn lifeline to reality.

I pulled a chair up to the other side of Isabella. "I thought you said this shit would work?"

"It has worked. Bella's memory of the event is sealed tight. However, Bella's mind is rejecting the control. She's starting to splinter."

"Splinter? What does that mean?" All I could think of was a piece of wood shattering into pieces.

"I can't say for certain. Magic is a delicate art. Bella has strength in mind, which I'm hardly surprised at, seeing as though she belongs with you." She inclined her head to Edward and went back to inspecting Isabella's aura.

"She doesn't _belong_ to anyone." I glared at the boy, recognizing the look of devotion shining in his eyes. I owned that look when seeing Renee.

_Look what it did for her._

"Best case scenario…she'll have a mental break and we'll deal with multiple personality disorder." Tami clapped her hands and stood.

"Hold on a second, Mary Fucking Poppins," I stood too, "that's it? You leave your temple on the side of the mountain to make some stupid declaration of possible mental breakdown?"

"Yes." Tami threw her velvet cape around her shoulders and headed for the door.

"What's the worse case?"

Deep in my heart I already knew the answer. It's what pushed me to have her bind Isabella's memories to begin with.

"Giving up hope," Tami offered with a frown, "that's the worst thing you can do now."

**BiB~BiB~BiB~BiB~BiB~BiB**

**July 15th, 2010**

"_No! No! Let me go!" she screamed in her sleep. Dreams so real that she wasn't aware she was asleep. Nightmares so vivid, like living in a horror film. _

_It tore me up. Damn near killed me every single time I heard her cry out. I stood right outside the door, my ear pressed against the wood. She thrashed in her bed, fighting against Edward's insistence for her to wake up. I could hear every hitch in her breath, my tears matching each one that fell from her eyes._

_It was best that I didn't enter the room, even though every instinct I had was screaming for me to just run in and hold her. The first few nights after she was healed I made the mistake of going inside. _

_I expected her to be angry with me—hell just angry at the world in general. I hadn't anticipated her being so withdrawn. She'd scream and I'd wake her up, but Isabella wasn't the person watching me when her eyes were open. She was a ghost. A shell. What was worse was that she was only like that around me. When I'd see her walking around with Edward or trying to hide from Em she was more normal—had some color in her cheeks. _

_When she saw me coming, that all drained away._

_It was hell to hear my baby girl fight against the monsters in her dreams each night, but it was torture to see the life leave her body._

_Her cries quieted after a moment and so I shuffled off down the hall before I was caught trying to help. _

"_Charlie?" Edward walked up behind me without so much as a whisper of sound. "I want to talk to you about Jazz's suggestion. You know…about taking Bella to Tami? I know you're against it, but maybe she can help."_

_Edward pleaded a case about Isabella's fading health. She wasn't eating much. She didn't get any rest. Anxiety was about the only emotion she was feeling anymore. He made me face facts right there in the hallway. No more pretending. Eventually, it wouldn't be just me that she was an empty shell around. Pretty soon, she'd just cease to exist for the sake of surviving. _

"_Okay."_

_I turned back down the hall, heading downstairs to get ready for my morning fishing trip._

"_Okay? You mean…you wanna try this?" _

_I felt as shocked as he sounded, but more than that, I felt like I was out of options. I spent my life living by my instincts. I'd put my trust in the wolves with both Renee and Bella's lives. I might have had the learning curve of five year old, but I wouldn't make the same mistake again. _

"_Call her. Fix my baby girl."_

**BiB~BiB~BiB~BiB~BiB~BiB**

**September 5****th****, 2010**

There was a bottle of Jack stashed under the sink. It was clear to me now that I had been delusional in my quest for sobriety over the last two months. Somehow I had myself fooled into thinking I could exist in this world without operating under the influence.

My trek out to the garage was a bit on the wobbly side. I didn't give a damn that my gracefulness went out the window with my clear thinking.

_Best case scenario, she has a mental break and we deal with multiple personality disorder. _

"Best case scenario." I threw back another swig of booze, shoving open the door and glaring at the pieces of classic car lying all over the garage.

My foot collided with a tool kit. "Shit!" I kicked the box out of my way, limping to a stool next to the frame of the car.

"Worst case is she goes so damn crazy she kills herself…or someone else." Guilt and panic washed over me. I drank some more, just hoping for oblivion.

I picked up the license plate. "It's all _your _fault. If I had never met you none of this would have happened."

"_You can't blame him for this."_ I heard her voice in my head like she was standing right beside me. Renee.

"Don't you do that! Don't you dare try to talk me out of being pissed."

I could hear her laugh. God, how I'd missed that sound. _"That's right, Charles. Pout to an imaginary voice. You sure told me."_

I rolled my eyes, fighting back the urge to cry. "I fucked up, sweetheart. I'm so sorry. I don't know how to fix it."

"_It'll be okay, Charlie. Just follow your heart."_

I brought the bottle to my lips again. There wasn't a heart left in my chest to follow.

**BiB~BiB~BiB~BiB~BiB~BiB**

**A/N: thanks again for reading!**


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